Middle Mesa, NM
Middle Mesa wildfire risk explained
Middle Mesa's 221 buildings earn a 75th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Middle Mesa at the 75th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Middle Mesa's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Middle Mesa: 81% of its 221 buildings, versus 19% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
How Middle Mesa compares
Middle Mesa's 75th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 47th ranking inside New Mexico does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 28 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Middle Mesa ranks 7,823 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,087 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 264 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
Middle Mesa and the insurance market
Middle Mesa's 75th-percentile, 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 Middle Mesa
Because Direct exposure dominates in Middle Mesa (81%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Middle Mesa's 75th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Middle Mesa, see the exposure-zones guide.