Golden, CO
Golden wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Golden at the 95th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 6,748 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Golden at the 93rd percentile, close to its 95th-percentile risk score.
Where Golden's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 92% of Golden's 6,748 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 8% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 6,748 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Golden against the rest of the country
Golden's risk sits at a similar level relative to Colorado (83rd percentile statewide) as it does nationally (95th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Golden ranks 1,665 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,565 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 82 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
Golden's 95th-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 Golden
Because 92% of Golden's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Golden's figures come from
Golden's 95th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Golden's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.