Desert Aire, WA
Desert Aire, WA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Desert Aire at the 90th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 1,437 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Desert Aire at the 91st percentile, close to its 90th-percentile risk score.
Where Desert Aire's buildings actually sit
Indirect exposure is dominant in Desert Aire (85% of 1,437 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 14.8% sit in the Direct zone.
Desert Aire against the rest of the country
Desert Aire's risk sits at a similar level relative to Washington (81st percentile statewide) as it does nationally (90th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Desert Aire ranks 3,074 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,447 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 122 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
Desert Aire and the insurance market
Desert Aire'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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 85% of Desert Aire'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.
More on how this number was built
Desert Aire's 90th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Desert Aire, see the exposure-zones guide.