Rio Communities, NM
Rio Communities, NM's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Rio Communities at the 59th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 3,757 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 Rio Communities at the 58th percentile, close to its 59th-percentile risk score.
Rio Communities's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 50.6% of Rio Communities's 3,757 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 49.4% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Rio Communities against the rest of the country
Inside New Mexico, Rio Communities sits at just the 28th percentile even though it scores 59th 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, Rio Communities ranks 12,963 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,468 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 354 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Rio Communities
Rio Communities's elevated wildfire rating (59th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 50.6% of Rio Communities'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 Rio Communities's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 3,757 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Rio Communities. The exposure-zones guide covers what Rio Communities's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.