Albuquerque, NM
Albuquerque, NM's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Albuquerque's 204,776 buildings earn a 63rd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Albuquerque at the 59th national percentile — 5 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Albuquerque's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 72.5% of Albuquerque's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 3.5% Direct and 24% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 204,776 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Albuquerque ranks
Inside New Mexico, Albuquerque sits at just the 34th percentile even though it scores 63rd nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Albuquerque ranks 11,573 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 27 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 326 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 63rd percentile nationally, Albuquerque 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
Even with 72.5% of Albuquerque outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 204,776 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Albuquerque. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Albuquerque, see the exposure-zones guide.