Colfax, LA
Colfax, LA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Colfax at the 65th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 799 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Colfax's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 67th percentile nationally.
Where Colfax's buildings actually sit
Most of Colfax's buildings (87.4%) 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.
Colfax against the rest of the country
Compare Colfax's two percentiles: 81st within Louisiana, only 65th nationally — a gap of 16 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Colfax ranks 11,121 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,641 by building count (1 is largest). Within Louisiana alone, it ranks 93 of 488 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Louisiana on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Colfax's 65th-percentile, 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 Colfax
Colfax's 87.4% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Colfax's 11,121-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Colfax, see the exposure-zones guide.