Gunnison, CO
Gunnison wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Gunnison at the 46th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 2,612 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Gunnison at the 44th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Gunnison's buildings actually sit
Most of Gunnison's buildings (90.2%) 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.
Gunnison against the rest of the country
Inside Colorado, Gunnison sits at just the 13th percentile even though it scores 46th 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, Gunnison ranks 17,041 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,079 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 411 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
Gunnison's elevated wildfire rating (46th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 90.2% of Gunnison'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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Gunnison's 17,041-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Gunnison, see the exposure-zones guide.