Artesia, NM
How exposed is Artesia to wildfire?
Artesia sits at the 72nd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 6,778 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Artesia's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 74th percentile nationally.
Artesia's building exposure, zone by zone
Indirect exposure is dominant in Artesia (90.5% of 6,778 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 9.5% sit in the Direct zone. At 6,778 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Artesia compares
Inside New Mexico, Artesia sits at just the 43rd percentile even though it scores 72nd 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, Artesia ranks 8,701 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,552 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 281 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
Artesia and the insurance market
Artesia's 72nd-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
Because 90.5% of Artesia's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Artesia's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Artesia's 8,701-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Artesia's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.