Harlingen, TX
Harlingen wildfire risk explained
Harlingen sits at the 54th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 26,110 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Harlingen at the 55th percentile, close to its 54th-percentile risk score.
Harlingen's building exposure, zone by zone
Harlingen rates 89.5% Minimal exposure against just 10.6% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 26,110 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 26,110 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Harlingen ranks
Harlingen's 54th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 9th ranking inside Texas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 45 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Harlingen ranks 14,669 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 476 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,639 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Harlingen and the insurance market
At the 54th national percentile, Harlingen rates elevated 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
Harlingen's 89.5% 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.
Where Harlingen's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 26,110 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Harlingen. The exposure-zones guide covers what Harlingen's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.