Mattawa, WA
How exposed is Mattawa to wildfire?
Mattawa's 812 buildings earn a 88th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Mattawa at the 88th percentile, close to its 88th-percentile risk score.
Mattawa's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Mattawa's buildings (95.2%) 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.
How Mattawa compares
Mattawa's risk sits at a similar level relative to Washington (78th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (88th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mattawa ranks 3,956 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,541 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 137 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
Mattawa and the insurance market
Mattawa's 88th-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.
Hardening a home in Mattawa
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Mattawa (95.2% 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 812 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Mattawa. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Mattawa, see the exposure-zones guide.