Cotopaxi, CO
How exposed is Cotopaxi to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Cotopaxi lands at the 89th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 87 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Cotopaxi's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 83rd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
87 buildings are counted in Cotopaxi, and 100% 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 Cotopaxi ranks
Inside Colorado, Cotopaxi sits at just the 73rd percentile even though it scores 89th 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, Cotopaxi ranks 3,367 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,607 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 128 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Cotopaxi and the insurance market
Cotopaxi's 89th-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 Cotopaxi
Cotopaxi's 100% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Cotopaxi's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Cotopaxi's 3,367-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Cotopaxi's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.