Palisade, CO
Palisade wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Palisade at the 75th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 1,313 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Palisade's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 69th percentile nationally.
Palisade's building exposure, zone by zone
96.2% of Palisade's 1,313 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 3.7% Direct and 0.1% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
Where Palisade ranks
Inside Colorado, Palisade sits at just the 44th percentile even though it scores 75th 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, Palisade ranks 7,962 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,002 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 263 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Palisade
Palisade's 75th-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
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Palisade (96.2% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Palisade's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,313 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Palisade. The exposure-zones guide covers what Palisade's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.