More than 1.3 million people dwell in places statewide where wildfires pose catastrophic risks to their safety and homes, a new analysis shows.

Most live in or near Front Range forests where firefighters have repeatedly faced disastrous blazes. But the latest state assessment also shows clusters of houses in hazardous settings in every corner of Colorado.

Overall, the estimated size of the vulnerable population has jumped considerably from a year ago, when The Denver Post and forestry experts calculated that about 980,000 people lived within a mile of the state's dense pine forests.

That's because Colorado's population has grown since 2000, and the new wildfire hazard analysis is not limited to forests. It looks at high-risk areas statewide, from suburbs sprawling into dry eastern grasslands to houses tucked among dirt roads lacing northwestern Colorado.

In the months ahead, the Colorado State Forest Service will use the new hazard assessment to show homeowners and firefighters ways to reduce disaster risks from wildfires. Already, their previously unpublished work is drawing inquiries from insurance companies seeking to identify residential customers in danger zones.

The new map of wildfire-threatened places is bound to surprise some homeowners.

Brad Trelstad, for one, rushed from his Las Vegas home to a vacation cabin bordering Cripple Creek when he heard about the immense Hayman fire. From a 96-inch picture window, he can see a vista of mountains covered with pines. Last week, he also saw smoke in the air above those mountains.

"I have a million-dollar view," he said. "But could you imagine if a fire came that way? I'd have a $100 view."

Before Hayman, he had not thought of wildfire as a potential threat to his Colorado getaway, which is in a subdivision rated as high risk. "I was more concerned about burglary," he said.

The rapid growth of new homes in such locations alarms Dave Theobald, a Colorado State University professor who studies land-use changes across the Rocky Mountain region.

During the 1990s, the population in the Western states jumped from 10 million to 12.2 million. In Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana, forest dwellers outpaced statewide population growth.

To Theobald, this development pattern looks no less ominous than the past practice of building homes along riverbanks that inevitably overflowed. "Disasters happen when people move into places where these natural processes occur," he said.

The latest attempt to quantify how many Coloradans live in places where fires occur involved seven state and federal agencies. The state forest service, an educational outreach arm of CSU, led the effort to produce what it formally calls the Wildland Urban Interface Hazard Assessment.

Much like previous "red zone" assessments from the forest service, the new interagency study focuses on places where homes mingle with combustible forces of nature.

Its hazard index uses three factors to gauge potential threats to lives and property: fuel, fire risk and housing. The highest risk occurs where 2 to 10 acres of extremely combustible vegetation surround a house built in an area where lightning or people easily ignite fires.

Environmental Systems Research Institute, a mapping software firm, used the new assessment and census data to give The Post county-by-county population estimates in 2002 within the highest hazard zones.

The results:

By the institute's calculation, about 30 percent of Colorado's 4.4 million people reside in places where a wildfire would pose high risks to lives and property.

Most live in suburban communities east of the Front Range mountains. In El Paso, Jefferson and Boulder counties alone, more than 500,000 people live in neighborhoods that rank high on the hazard index.

The risks run even higher in subdivisions spreading from metropolitan Denver and Colorado Springs into rural parts of Park, Teller and Douglas counties. These are the counties already ravaged by Colorado's three worst wildfires in the past six years: Hayman, Buffalo Creek, Hi Meadow.

Yet the growing list of endangered communities leaves some homeowners doubting the state's latest warning.

Parris Neal lives in The Heights, a quiet El Paso County subdivision east of Interstate 25. Somewhere to the west, the Hayman fire raged on. "Look, you can see it right now," he said, pointing toward a distant ridge. "See the haze along the mountain?"

His suburban home, cream colored with a manicured green lawn, lies in a danger zone, according to the state analysis. But Neal isn't worried because I-25 could act as a fire wall to the west. Prevailing winds usually blow away from the forest near his front door. "This house seems to be reasonably safe," he said.

The new analysis also shows wildfire hazard zones expanding in many other parts of Colorado. Some line the mountain roads where new housing developments stretch from Aspen, Durango and Steamboat Springs. In others around Fort Morgan and Sterling, neighborhoods range into prairies ignited occasionally by lightning strikes.

In Sterling, city planner Joanne Poret said she wasn't surprised to learn that residential areas around municipal borders rank as highly vulnerable to wildfires.

"If you drive around Sterling, you see a lot of rural land, the prairies, a lot of grasslands," she said, and when lightning strikes, "a lot of grass fires."

This year, dry grasslands have city officials debating whether to call off a July 4 fireworks show.

Skip Edel, the state forest service's computer mapping expert, headed the project that identified wildfire hazard zones statewide. He described it as an evolving effort to define where wildfires pose "the biggest threat to loss of life and property."

Its results will be used for two purposes, he said: to stress the importance of defensible spaces to homeowners, and to help government agencies plan ways to reduce natural fuel hazards.

At State Farm Insurance Cos. in Greeley, wildfire specialist Steve Niccolai called Edel to request a copy. His company also wants to teach customers "how to create defensible spaces around their homes, and people are listening this year," he said. "All of a sudden we have their ear."

Others aren't waiting for an official announcement.

The Graham family - Dean, his wife, Kim, and two daughters - bought a mobile home in Cripple Creek Mountain Estates, a few hundred steps from Trelstad's luxurious cabin.

Dean Graham, who is laboring daily to build his dream home, said he needed no computer analysis to know he was in a high-risk fire zone. He's a former volunteer firefighter. He has four chain saws ready to clear a 10-foot circle around his house if fire creeps his way.

"I could sit inside my house and worry about fire," Graham said, "but what's that going to accomplish?"