Mescalero, NM
Mescalero wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Mescalero at the 100th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 625 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Mescalero at the 99th percentile, close to its 100th-percentile risk score.
Where Mescalero's buildings actually sit
Direct exposure dominates in Mescalero: 90.2% of its 625 buildings, versus 9.8% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Mescalero ranks
Mescalero scores 100th nationally and 99th within New Mexico — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mescalero ranks 162 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,508 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 7 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
Mescalero and the insurance market
At the 100th percentile nationally, Mescalero carries the very 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.
Hardening a home in Mescalero
Mescalero's 90.2% 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 Mescalero's 162-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Mescalero, see the exposure-zones guide.