Dolores, CO
Dolores, CO's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Dolores at the 93rd national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 599 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Dolores at the 90th national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Dolores's buildings (78.3%) 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.
Dolores against the rest of the country
Dolores's risk sits at a similar level relative to Colorado (81st percentile statewide) as it does nationally (93rd) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Dolores ranks 2,201 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,846 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 89 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Dolores and the insurance market
Dolores's 93rd-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 Dolores
Dolores's 78.3% 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 Dolores's 2,201-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Dolores, see the exposure-zones guide.