Cactus Forest, AZ
Cactus Forest wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Cactus Forest at the 90th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 495 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Cactus Forest at the 90th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Cactus Forest's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 100% of Cactus Forest's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 0% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 495 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
Cactus Forest against the rest of the country
Cactus Forest's 90th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 62nd ranking inside Arizona does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 27 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cactus Forest ranks 3,297 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 17,435 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 167 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Cactus Forest's 90th-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 Cactus Forest
Because Direct exposure dominates in Cactus Forest (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 Cactus Forest's 3,297-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Cactus Forest, see the exposure-zones guide.