Sierra Ridge, CO
How exposed is Sierra Ridge to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Sierra Ridge lands at the 79th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 928 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Sierra Ridge at the 79th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Sierra Ridge's buildings actually sit
Most of Sierra Ridge's buildings (92.8%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
How Sierra Ridge compares
Inside Colorado, Sierra Ridge sits at just the 51st percentile even though it scores 79th 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, Sierra Ridge ranks 6,765 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,485 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 234 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Sierra Ridge's 79th-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
Sierra Ridge's 92.8% 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.
Where Sierra Ridge's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Sierra Ridge's 6,765-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Sierra Ridge's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.