Newcastle, UT
Newcastle wildfire risk explained
Newcastle's 172 buildings earn a 97th-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.)
Separately from the risk score above, Newcastle's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 94th percentile nationally.
Where Newcastle's buildings actually sit
79.7% of Newcastle's 172 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 137 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 20.4% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0% are Minimal.
Where Newcastle ranks
There's little gap between Newcastle's 97th national percentile and its 87th percentile inside Utah, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Newcastle ranks 1,087 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,966 by building count (1 is largest). Within Utah alone, it ranks 42 of 326 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Utah on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Newcastle's 97th-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 Newcastle
Newcastle's 79.7% 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
Newcastle's 97th-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 Newcastle, see the exposure-zones guide.