Copper Mountain, CO
Copper Mountain wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Copper Mountain at the 71st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 228 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Copper Mountain at the 62nd percentile, close to its 71st-percentile risk score.
Where Copper Mountain's buildings actually sit
Indirect exposure is dominant in Copper Mountain (57% of 228 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 43% sit in the Direct zone.
Copper Mountain against the rest of the country
Inside Colorado, Copper Mountain sits at just the 38th percentile even though it scores 71st nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Copper Mountain ranks 9,163 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 23,847 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 292 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Copper Mountain
Copper Mountain's 71st-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Copper Mountain's 57% 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 228 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Copper Mountain. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Copper Mountain, see the exposure-zones guide.