Placitas (Doña Ana), NM
Placitas (Doña Ana) wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Placitas (Doña Ana) at the 57th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 158 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Placitas (Doña Ana)'s burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 56th percentile nationally.
Where Placitas (Doña Ana)'s buildings actually sit
USFS puts 97.5% of Placitas (Doña Ana)'s 158 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 2.5% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Placitas (Doña Ana) compares
Placitas (Doña Ana)'s 57th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 26th ranking inside New Mexico does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 31 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Placitas (Doña Ana) ranks 13,432 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 26,539 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 367 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
Placitas (Doña Ana) and the insurance market
Placitas (Doña Ana)'s elevated wildfire rating (57th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 97.5% of Placitas (Doña Ana)'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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Placitas (Doña Ana)'s 13,432-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Placitas (Doña Ana), see the exposure-zones guide.