Fort Lauderdale, FL
Fort Lauderdale wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Fort Lauderdale at the 64th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 51,323 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Fort Lauderdale at the 66th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Fort Lauderdale's building exposure, zone by zone
97.6% of Fort Lauderdale's 51,323 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 2.4% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 51,323 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Fort Lauderdale against the rest of the country
Inside Florida, Fort Lauderdale sits at just the 18th percentile even though it scores 64th 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, Fort Lauderdale ranks 11,462 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 167 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 780 of 955 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Florida on its state page.
Fort Lauderdale and the insurance market
Fort Lauderdale's high rating (64th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Hardening a home in Fort Lauderdale
With 97.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Fort Lauderdale gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Fort Lauderdale's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 51,323 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Fort Lauderdale. The exposure-zones guide covers what Fort Lauderdale's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.