Catalina Foothills, AZ
Catalina Foothills wildfire risk explained
Catalina Foothills's 25,593 buildings earn a 73rd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Catalina Foothills at the 73rd percentile, close to its 73rd-percentile risk score.
Where Catalina Foothills's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 39% of Catalina Foothills's 25,593 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 23.1% Direct and 37.9% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 25,593 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Catalina Foothills against the rest of the country
Inside Arizona, Catalina Foothills sits at just the 35th percentile even though it scores 73rd 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, Catalina Foothills ranks 8,498 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 492 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 288 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
Catalina Foothills and the insurance market
Catalina Foothills's high rating (73rd 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 39% of Catalina Foothills'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 Catalina Foothills's figures come from
Catalina Foothills's 73rd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Catalina Foothills's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.