Hot Springs, AR
How exposed is Hot Springs to wildfire?
Hot Springs's 19,170 buildings earn a 66th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Hot Springs's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 69th percentile nationally.
Hot Springs's building exposure, zone by zone
48.8% of Hot Springs's 19,170 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 23.9% Direct and 27.3% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone. At 19,170 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Hot Springs against the rest of the country
Hot Springs's 66th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 50th ranking inside Arkansas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 16 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Hot Springs ranks 10,707 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 739 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arkansas alone, it ranks 307 of 614 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arkansas on its state page.
Hot Springs and the insurance market
Hot Springs's 66th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Hot Springs (48.8% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Hot Springs's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 19,170 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Hot Springs. The exposure-zones guide covers what Hot Springs's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.