Lafayette, CO
Lafayette wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Lafayette at the 70th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 10,340 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lafayette at the 72nd national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Lafayette's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Lafayette's buildings (84% of 10,340) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 10,340 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Lafayette against the rest of the country
Inside Colorado, Lafayette sits at just the 37th percentile even though it scores 70th 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, Lafayette ranks 9,480 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,544 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 296 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
Lafayette's 70th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 84% of Lafayette outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Lafayette's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lafayette's 9,480-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Lafayette's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.