Alamogordo, NM
Alamogordo, NM's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Alamogordo lands at the 77th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 15,944 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Alamogordo at the 75th percentile, close to its 77th-percentile risk score.
Where Alamogordo's buildings actually sit
Most of Alamogordo's buildings (70.4%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone. At 15,944 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Alamogordo against the rest of the country
Alamogordo's 77th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 50th ranking inside New Mexico does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 27 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Alamogordo ranks 7,285 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 920 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 250 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Alamogordo
At the 77th percentile nationally, Alamogordo carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
What would actually reduce this score
Alamogordo's 70.4% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Alamogordo's 7,285-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Alamogordo, see the exposure-zones guide.