Jerome, AZ
How exposed is Jerome to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Jerome at the 97th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 321 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Jerome at the 95th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Jerome's buildings actually sit
321 buildings are counted in Jerome, and 67.6% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 32.4% in Direct exposure or the 0% rated Minimal.
Jerome against the rest of the country
Inside Arizona, Jerome sits at just the 81st percentile even though it scores 97th 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, Jerome ranks 1,026 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,052 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 83 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
Jerome and the insurance market
Jerome's 97th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Jerome (67.6% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 321 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Jerome. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Jerome, see the exposure-zones guide.