Cedar Crest, NM
How exposed is Cedar Crest to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Cedar Crest lands at the 95th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 648 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Cedar Crest's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 92nd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
648 buildings are counted in Cedar Crest, and 92.1% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
Where Cedar Crest ranks
There's little gap between Cedar Crest's 95th national percentile and its 84th percentile inside New Mexico, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cedar Crest ranks 1,580 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,222 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 78 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Cedar Crest
Cedar Crest's 95th-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.
Hardening a home in Cedar Crest
With 92.1% of Cedar Crest in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Cedar Crest's 1,580-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Cedar Crest, see the exposure-zones guide.