Upper Bear Creek, CO
How exposed is Upper Bear Creek to wildfire?
Upper Bear Creek sits at the 99th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 596 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Upper Bear Creek at the 98th percentile, close to its 99th-percentile risk score.
Upper Bear Creek's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Upper Bear Creek: 100% of its 596 buildings, versus 0% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Upper Bear Creek ranks
There's little gap between Upper Bear Creek's 99th national percentile and its 98th percentile inside Colorado, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Upper Bear Creek ranks 285 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,890 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 12 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Upper Bear Creek
Upper Bear Creek's very high rating (99th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
What would actually reduce this score
Because Direct exposure dominates in Upper Bear Creek (100%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Upper Bear Creek's 285-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Upper Bear Creek, see the exposure-zones guide.