Flagstaff, AZ
How exposed is Flagstaff to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Flagstaff lands at the 99th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 21,930 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Flagstaff at the 98th percentile, close to its 99th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 82% of Flagstaff's 21,930 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 14.6% Direct and 3.4% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 21,930 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Flagstaff ranks
Flagstaff scores 99th nationally and 93rd within Arizona — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Flagstaff ranks 397 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 627 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 29 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Flagstaff's 99th-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.
Hardening a home in Flagstaff
Flagstaff's 82% 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.
Where Flagstaff's figures come from
Flagstaff's 99th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Flagstaff's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.