Avondale, AZ
Avondale wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Avondale at the 87th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 26,909 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Avondale at the 83rd national percentile — 4 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Avondale's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Avondale's buildings (47.9% of 26,909) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 26,909 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Avondale against the rest of the country
Avondale's 87th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 60th ranking inside Arizona does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 28 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Avondale ranks 3,990 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 457 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 179 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
Avondale and the insurance market
Avondale's 87th-percentile, very 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 Avondale
Avondale's 47.9% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Avondale's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 26,909 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Avondale. The exposure-zones guide covers what Avondale's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.