Las Vegas, NV
Las Vegas wildfire risk explained
Las Vegas sits at the 85th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 199,766 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 Las Vegas at the 84th percentile, close to its 85th-percentile risk score.
Where Las Vegas's buildings actually sit
83.5% of Las Vegas's 199,766 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 1.9% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 199,766 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Las Vegas compares
Inside Nevada, Las Vegas sits at just the 36th percentile even though it scores 85th 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, Las Vegas ranks 4,855 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 28 by building count (1 is largest). Within Nevada alone, it ranks 79 of 123 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Nevada on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Las Vegas
Las Vegas's very high rating (85th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
What would actually reduce this score
Las Vegas's 83.5% 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.
Where Las Vegas's figures come from
Las Vegas's 85th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Las Vegas's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.