Rio Rancho, NM
Rio Rancho wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Rio Rancho at the 55th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 37,674 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Rio Rancho's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 53rd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Rio Rancho's buildings (64.1% of 37,674) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 37,674 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Rio Rancho compares
Inside New Mexico, Rio Rancho sits at just the 23rd percentile even though it scores 55th 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 Rancho ranks 14,154 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 270 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 382 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
Rio Rancho and the insurance market
Rio Rancho's elevated wildfire rating (55th 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
Rio Rancho's 64.1% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Rio Rancho's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Rio Rancho's 14,154-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Rio Rancho's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.