Jamaica Beach, TX
Jamaica Beach, TX's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Jamaica Beach at the 85th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 1,257 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Jamaica Beach at the 82nd percentile, close to its 85th-percentile risk score.
Jamaica Beach's building exposure, zone by zone
1,257 buildings are counted in Jamaica Beach, and 94.4% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 3.8% in Direct exposure or the 1.8% rated Minimal.
How Jamaica Beach compares
Jamaica Beach scores 85th nationally and 74th within Texas — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Jamaica Beach ranks 4,616 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,315 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 464 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Jamaica Beach and the insurance market
Jamaica Beach's 85th-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.
Hardening a home in Jamaica Beach
Jamaica Beach's 94.4% 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.
Where Jamaica Beach's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,257 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Jamaica Beach. The exposure-zones guide covers what Jamaica Beach's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.