Boulder, CO
Boulder, CO's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Boulder lands at the 97th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 28,641 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Boulder's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 96th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Boulder's buildings (62.3%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone. At 28,641 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Boulder compares
There's little gap between Boulder's 97th 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, Boulder ranks 1,097 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 414 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 66 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Boulder
Boulder's very high rating (97th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Boulder's 62.3% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 28,641 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Boulder. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Boulder, see the exposure-zones guide.