Colorado Springs, CO
Colorado Springs, CO's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Colorado Springs at the 96th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 158,742 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Colorado Springs's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 95th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
66.7% of Colorado Springs's 158,742 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 12.6% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 158,742 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Colorado Springs compares
Colorado Springs's risk sits at a similar level relative to Colorado (86th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (96th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Colorado Springs ranks 1,162 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 40 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 68 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
Colorado Springs's 96th-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
With 66.7% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Colorado Springs gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Colorado Springs's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 158,742 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Colorado Springs. The exposure-zones guide covers what Colorado Springs's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.