Manitou Springs, CO
How exposed is Manitou Springs to wildfire?
USFS scores Manitou Springs at the 99th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 2,378 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 Manitou Springs at the 98th percentile, close to its 99th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 73.6% of Manitou Springs's 2,378 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 26.4% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Manitou Springs ranks
There's little gap between Manitou Springs's 99th national percentile and its 96th percentile inside Colorado, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Manitou Springs ranks 314 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,554 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 18 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
Manitou Springs's 99th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Manitou Springs (73.6% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Manitou Springs's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Manitou Springs's 314-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Manitou Springs's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.