El Paso, TX
El Paso, TX's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts El Paso at the 38th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 226,722 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks El Paso at the 38th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
56% of El Paso's 226,722 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 4.4% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 226,722 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How El Paso compares
El Paso's 38th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 3rd ranking inside Texas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 35 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, El Paso ranks 19,494 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 20 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,735 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
El Paso and the insurance market
At the 38th national percentile, El Paso rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
El Paso's 56% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind El Paso's 19,494-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond El Paso, see the exposure-zones guide.