Cave Creek, AZ
Cave Creek wildfire risk explained
Cave Creek sits at the 89th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 4,336 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Cave Creek at the 87th percentile, close to its 89th-percentile risk score.
Cave Creek's building exposure, zone by zone
4,336 buildings are counted in Cave Creek, and 55.4% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 4.5% rated Minimal.
Cave Creek against the rest of the country
Cave Creek's 89th 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, Cave Creek ranks 3,487 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,951 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 170 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
Cave Creek and the insurance market
Cave Creek's 89th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 55.4% of Cave Creek in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
Where Cave Creek's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Cave Creek's 3,487-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Cave Creek's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.