Southern Ute, CO
How exposed is Southern Ute to wildfire?
USFS scores Southern Ute at the 79th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 248 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Southern Ute's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 80th percentile nationally.
Southern Ute's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Southern Ute's 248 counted buildings, 99.2% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Southern Ute against the rest of the country
Southern Ute's 79th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 53rd ranking inside Colorado does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 26 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Southern Ute ranks 6,551 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 23,195 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 224 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Southern Ute and the insurance market
At the 79th percentile nationally, Southern Ute carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Southern Ute's 99.2% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Southern Ute's 6,551-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Southern Ute, see the exposure-zones guide.