Fort Wingate, NM
How exposed is Fort Wingate to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Fort Wingate lands at the 80th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 191 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Fort Wingate at the 71st national percentile — 9 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Fort Wingate's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 55% of Fort Wingate's 191 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 45% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Fort Wingate against the rest of the country
Inside New Mexico, Fort Wingate sits at just the 53rd percentile even though it scores 80th 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 Wingate ranks 6,303 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,211 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 233 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Fort Wingate's 80th-percentile, 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 Fort Wingate
Fort Wingate's 55% 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.
More on how this number was built
Fort Wingate's 80th-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 Fort Wingate, see the exposure-zones guide.