Red Cliff, CO
How exposed is Red Cliff to wildfire?
USFS scores Red Cliff at the 86th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 151 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 Red Cliff at the 80th percentile, close to its 86th-percentile risk score.
Where Red Cliff's buildings actually sit
52.3% of Red Cliff's 151 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 47.7% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
Where Red Cliff ranks
Inside Colorado, Red Cliff sits at just the 67th percentile even though it scores 86th 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, Red Cliff ranks 4,503 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 26,836 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 159 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Red Cliff
Red Cliff's 86th-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
Red Cliff's 52.3% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Red Cliff's 4,503-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Red Cliff, see the exposure-zones guide.