Altona, CO
How exposed is Altona to wildfire?
Altona sits at the 96th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 305 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Altona at the 96th percentile, close to its 96th-percentile risk score.
Where Altona's buildings actually sit
Direct exposure dominates in Altona: 99% of its 305 buildings, versus 1% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Altona against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Altona's 96th national percentile and its 86th percentile inside Colorado, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Altona ranks 1,161 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,492 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 67 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Altona
Altona's 96th-percentile, very high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
Altona's 99% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Altona's 96th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Altona, see the exposure-zones guide.