Matlacha, FL
Matlacha wildfire risk explained
Matlacha sits at the 93rd 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 602 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 Matlacha at the 92nd percentile, close to its 93rd-percentile risk score.
Where Matlacha's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 89.4% of Matlacha's 602 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 0.5% Direct and 10.1% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Matlacha compares
There's little gap between Matlacha's 93rd national percentile and its 87th percentile inside Florida, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Matlacha ranks 2,326 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,809 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 129 of 955 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Florida on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Matlacha
Matlacha's very high rating (93rd 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
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Matlacha (89.4% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Matlacha's 2,326-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Matlacha, see the exposure-zones guide.