Horseshoe Beach, FL
Horseshoe Beach wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Horseshoe Beach lands at the 95th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 409 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Horseshoe Beach at the 93rd national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 95.8% of Horseshoe Beach's 409 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 1% Direct and 3.2% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Horseshoe Beach compares
Horseshoe Beach's risk sits at a similar level relative to Florida (94th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (95th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Horseshoe Beach ranks 1,440 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 19,047 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 60 of 955 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Florida on its state page.
Horseshoe Beach and the insurance market
Horseshoe Beach's 95th-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
Because 95.8% of Horseshoe Beach's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Horseshoe Beach's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 409 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Horseshoe Beach. The exposure-zones guide covers what Horseshoe Beach's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.