La Sal, UT
La Sal wildfire risk explained
La Sal sits at the 78th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 360 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts La Sal at the 69th percentile, close to its 78th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
98.1% of La Sal's 360 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 353 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 1.9% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0% are Minimal.
How La Sal compares
La Sal ranks lower within Utah (35th percentile statewide) than its 78th national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, La Sal ranks 7,104 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 20,072 by building count (1 is largest). Within Utah alone, it ranks 212 of 326 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Utah on its state page.
La Sal and the insurance market
La Sal's 78th-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.
Hardening a home in La Sal
La Sal's 98.1% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind La Sal's 7,104-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond La Sal, see the exposure-zones guide.