Arvada, CO
How exposed is Arvada to wildfire?
USFS scores Arvada at the 97th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 42,348 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Arvada at the 95th percentile, close to its 97th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
80.4% of Arvada's 42,348 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 7.2% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 42,348 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Arvada compares
Arvada scores 97th nationally and 86th within Colorado — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Arvada ranks 1,066 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 224 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 62 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Arvada
Arvada's 97th-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
Even with 80.4% of Arvada 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.
Where Arvada's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Arvada's 1,066-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Arvada's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.