Highlands Ranch, CO
Highlands Ranch wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Highlands Ranch at the 88th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 32,137 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 Highlands Ranch at the 88th percentile, close to its 88th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 55.8% of Highlands Ranch's 32,137 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 7.7% Direct and 36.6% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 32,137 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Highlands Ranch against the rest of the country
Inside Colorado, Highlands Ranch sits at just the 70th percentile even though it scores 88th 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, Highlands Ranch ranks 3,773 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 344 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 142 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Highlands Ranch and the insurance market
At the 88th percentile nationally, Highlands Ranch carries the very high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
Hardening a home in Highlands Ranch
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Highlands Ranch (55.8% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Highlands Ranch's 88th-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 Highlands Ranch, see the exposure-zones guide.