Gunnison, UT
Gunnison wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Gunnison at the 64th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 1,073 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 Gunnison at the 64th percentile, close to its 64th-percentile risk score.
Where Gunnison's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 71.2% of Gunnison's 1,073 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 28.5% Direct and 0.3% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Gunnison ranks
Gunnison's 64th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 20th ranking inside Utah does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 43 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Gunnison ranks 11,455 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,450 by building count (1 is largest). Within Utah alone, it ranks 260 of 326 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Utah on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Gunnison
Gunnison's 64th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 71.2% 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
Gunnison's 64th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Gunnison, see the exposure-zones guide.