Berthoud, CO
Berthoud wildfire risk explained
Berthoud sits at the 75th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 3,762 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 Berthoud at the 77th percentile, close to its 75th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Berthoud rates 66.8% Minimal exposure against just 12.9% Direct and 20.3% Indirect — of 3,762 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Where Berthoud ranks
Berthoud's 75th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 44th ranking inside Colorado does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 31 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Berthoud ranks 8,032 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,463 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 266 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Berthoud's high rating (75th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 66.8% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Berthoud gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Berthoud's 8,032-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Berthoud, see the exposure-zones guide.