Cordes Lakes, AZ
Cordes Lakes wildfire risk explained
Cordes Lakes sits at the 90th 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 1,774 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 Cordes Lakes at the 90th percentile, close to its 90th-percentile risk score.
Where Cordes Lakes's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 59.7% of Cordes Lakes's 1,774 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 40.3% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Cordes Lakes ranks
Inside Arizona, Cordes Lakes sits at just the 64th percentile even though it scores 90th 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, Cordes Lakes ranks 3,014 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,140 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 158 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
Cordes Lakes and the insurance market
At the 90th percentile nationally, Cordes Lakes carries the very high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
Hardening a home in Cordes Lakes
Cordes Lakes's 59.7% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Cordes Lakes's 3,014-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Cordes Lakes, see the exposure-zones guide.