Thoreau, NM
How exposed is Thoreau to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Thoreau lands at the 68th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 1,201 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Thoreau at the 61st national percentile — 7 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Thoreau's buildings actually sit
83.7% of Thoreau's 1,201 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 1,005 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 16.3% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0% are Minimal.
How Thoreau compares
Thoreau's 68th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 39th ranking inside New Mexico does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 29 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Thoreau ranks 10,182 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,646 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 304 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Thoreau
Thoreau's 68th-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.
Hardening a home in Thoreau
With 83.7% of Thoreau in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Thoreau's 10,182-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Thoreau, see the exposure-zones guide.