Elberta, UT
How exposed is Elberta to wildfire?
USFS scores Elberta at the 98th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 114 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Elberta's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 97th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Direct exposure dominates in Elberta: 87.7% of its 114 buildings, versus 12.3% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Elberta ranks
Elberta scores 98th nationally and 92nd within Utah — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Elberta ranks 802 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 28,480 by building count (1 is largest). Within Utah alone, it ranks 28 of 326 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Utah on its state page.
Elberta and the insurance market
Elberta's 98th-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
Elberta's 87.7% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Elberta's 98th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Elberta, see the exposure-zones guide.