Amherst, CO
Amherst, CO's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Amherst at the 43rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 76 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Amherst at the 40th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Amherst's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 39.5% of Amherst's 76 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 60.5% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
How Amherst compares
Inside Colorado, Amherst sits at just the 10th percentile even though it scores 43rd 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, Amherst ranks 18,113 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,041 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 426 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Amherst and the insurance market
Amherst's elevated wildfire rating (43rd percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Hardening a home in Amherst
Even with 60.5% of Amherst 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
Amherst's 43rd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Amherst, see the exposure-zones guide.