For thousands of people, a home in the woods is a primal urge, a symbol of freedom and luxury, a refuge from the buzz of city life.

This year's record fires will not stop people from building, said Roger Reinhardt, executive officer for Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Denver.

"Will what we are seeing curtail demand? Absolutely not in the least," he said. "Will jurisdictions move to limit development in those areas? No. You can't protect people from themselves."

By 2030, nearly 2.2 million residences will stand in fire-prone, forested areas of the Rocky Mountain West - a 40 percent jump from current levels.

Colorado sets the pace in forest construction. Nearly one-third of the new homes in the Rocky Mountain woodlands will be built in Colorado, and 1.25 million people will live there in 2030, according to a recent study.

"It's a conflict of lifestyle versus risk," said Ron Brave, a fire protection engineer in Eagle County, home to Vail and Beaver Creek. "People who move here from the big city don't think a lot about wildland fire because there's no such thing where they came from. They haven't experienced it; they haven't seen fire jumping 100 feet into the air."

Lifestyle is winning the conflict - despite the dangers.

This year's wildfire season offers a glimpse of the hazards ahead. The fires roared before summer started, raging on the outskirts of Denver, Durango and Glenwood Springs. The Hayman fire - the largest ever recorded in Colorado - claimed 133 homes.

Robert Villani knew the risk he was taking in 1995 when he moved from his Lakewood townhome to his 2,200-square-foot home in the Indian Creek West subdivision of Teller County. That risk was worth the peace and quiet of living on 15 tree-filled acres, he said.

He spent 16 days in temporary housing as the Hayman fire threatened to consume his home.

"It's worth the risk," said Villani, who is 48. "The way I look at it, you could have a fire inside your house that has nothing to do with the forest. These things happen every day."

There are going to be more homeowners like Robert Villani.

The baby-boom generation is edging toward retirement, and homebuilders are pushing deeper into the woods.

Ed Peterson, an Estes Park-based homebuilder, said most of his customers come from out of state. They seek shelter from the falling stock market - a home in the woods seems safe by comparison.

"We've got a lot of guys five to eight years from retirement who are staking claims now," Peterson said.

Housing boom

In Colorado, the number of people living in wooded areas is expected to jump from 953,000 residents to 1.25 million by 2030 - a 31 percent increase. In Front Range counties, more than 143,000 additional people are expected to move into the forest fringe by 2030.

The number of houses in Colorado's woodlands is expected to grow even faster.

Homebuilders will add 197,000 residences to the existing stock of 464,000. Throughout the Rocky Mountain region, about 654,000 houses will be constructed in wooded areas during the next 30 years, boosting the total to 2.2 million.

David Theobald, research scientist for the Natural Resource Ecology Lab, made those projections by comparing housing growth based on census data and forest information from the U.S. Forest Service.

The number of people living in fire-risk areas will increase in 35 of the 42 Colorado counties with significant woodlands. The number of forest dwellers is expected to double in Douglas County along the Front Range and in Conejos and Saguache counties in southern Colorado.

Many mountain housing projects have been on the drawing boards for years.

Saddleback Mountain Development Corp. is moving ground on the first phase of a 1,600-acre project in Clear Creek County on the western border of Evergreen.

The first 584 acres of the project will include 86 homes and roughly 200 acres of open space, said Charles Choi, president of C.Y. Choi & Associates, which is overseeing the project for Saddleback Mountain Development.

Home construction could begin this fall.

The developer hasn't determined the density or layout of future phases of the project, which is the remaining segment of a larger development started in the 1970s. Saddleback Mountain Development bought the land eight years ago.

"Mountain living is part of the Colorado lifestyle," said Reinhardt of the homebuilders' association. "It's a natural attraction, and as long as that attraction exists and the property is available, you're going to have developers building for that demand."

Reinhardt has lived in Castle Pines Village for two years. He knows that the abundant trees around his home put him in danger of wildfires, but it is not something that worries him.

"If it happens, it happens. I assessed the risk, and I was willing to take it," he said. "Do most people understand the risk? I would venture to say no. But if they did, it wouldn't make a difference to them."

That is partly because owning a home in the woods offers better odds than rolling the dice.

"You have to admit their gamble is not like being in Las Vegas," said Bill Travis, professor of geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It is possible that by developing a home in the ponderosa pines in the foothills in Boulder you could lose your home to a fire, but the chance is very low that it will happen during your 30-year mortgage."

Villani's experience is a case in point.

He returned home Wednesday to find his house and property unscathed.

"The fire stopped about a tenth of a mile from the house," he said. "We feel like we were being watched out for."

Dangers everywhere

The experience of sweating out the Hayman fire has not changed his mind about living among the trees.

Of course, forest fires do not happen every day. Neither do hurricanes, earthquakes and floods.

"I grew up here in Colorado, and I'd see reports about hurricanes hitting South Carolina or Texas," said Bill Johnston, director of community development in Teller County. "I'd be really self-righteous and say, "Oh look at all of our tax money going to subsidize rebuilding houses on the coastal islands.'

"What we're learning now is that the mountains are a high-risk area to live because of the fires," he said.

Many counties set basic fire-safety rules for homebuilders. They require homeowners to use fire-resistant roofing material. They set standards for cutting back trees around houses. They mandate wide access roads and on-site water storage tanks.

And private insurers will continue to cover fire losses because they have not paid overwhelming claims because of fire. The losses caused by the Los Alamos fire in New Mexico in 2000 amounted to $140 million - a relatively small sum for the industry.

As long as homeowners take precautions, insurance will still be available, said Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association, a trade group for insurance companies.

"You can't make a house disaster-proof, but you can make it disaster-resistant," Walker said.

But counties could be even tougher on homebuilders and landowners, Johnston said. They could consider requiring fees for roads connecting to home sites or could limit construction on properties owned through mining claims.

Lee Nellis, director of land-use policy for the nonprofit Sonoran Institute, said counties could consider an impact fee or some other special assessment that homeowners would pay to help cover the costs of preventing and fighting fires.

But stronger restrictions can lead to strong reactions - especially in the Rocky Mountain West, where freedom from excessive government is prized.

The Land Use Coalition is one example.

The Boulder County group is a self-described collection of buttoned-down lawyers, free-spirited bikers, grandmothers and architects who challenge rules that would limit construction on private land.

Nederland resident Kevin Probst, president of the Land Use Coalition, said the group believes the government should pay private owners for land if owners are not allowed to build on it.

Still, the group, which includes many owners of wooded mountain land, might favor an impact fee for fire safety if it protected the right to build in wooded areas.

"There's a reason people live up here," Probst said. "It's more than pretty. It does something for a person's soul."