Laredo, TX
How exposed is Laredo to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Laredo lands at the 72nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 72,768 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Laredo at the 68th percentile, close to its 72nd-percentile risk score.
Where Laredo's buildings actually sit
Most of Laredo's buildings (50.8%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone. At 72,768 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Laredo ranks
Laredo's 72nd national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 36th ranking inside Texas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 36 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Laredo ranks 8,964 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 104 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,162 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Laredo and the insurance market
At the 72nd percentile nationally, Laredo carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Laredo (50.8% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Laredo's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 72,768 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Laredo. The exposure-zones guide covers what Laredo's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.