Idalou, TX
Idalou wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Idalou at the 28th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 1,194 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Idalou at the 25th national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Idalou's buildings actually sit
88% of Idalou's 1,194 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 12% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
How Idalou compares
Inside Texas, Idalou sits at just the 2nd percentile even though it scores 28th 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, Idalou ranks 22,772 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,686 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,759 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Idalou's moderate rating (28th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Idalou
Idalou's 88% 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.
More on how this number was built
Idalou's 28th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Idalou, see the exposure-zones guide.