La Veta, CO
How exposed is La Veta to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts La Veta at the 84th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 948 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, La Veta's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 81st percentile nationally.
La Veta's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 54.3% of La Veta's 948 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 45.7% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
La Veta against the rest of the country
Inside Colorado, La Veta sits at just the 64th percentile even though it scores 84th 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, La Veta ranks 4,911 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,319 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 167 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
La Veta's 84th-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 La Veta
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in La Veta (54.3% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where La Veta's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 948 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for La Veta. The exposure-zones guide covers what La Veta's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.