Oak Creek, CO
How exposed is Oak Creek to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Oak Creek lands at the 85th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 567 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Oak Creek at the 81st percentile, close to its 85th-percentile risk score.
Where Oak Creek's buildings actually sit
Indirect exposure is dominant in Oak Creek (78.8% of 567 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 21.2% sit in the Direct zone.
Oak Creek against the rest of the country
Inside Colorado, Oak Creek sits at just the 65th percentile even though it scores 85th 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, Oak Creek ranks 4,845 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 16,291 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 166 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
Oak Creek's 85th-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
Because 78.8% of Oak Creek'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.
Where Oak Creek's figures come from
Oak Creek's 85th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Oak Creek's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.