North Salt Lake, UT
North Salt Lake wildfire risk explained
North Salt Lake sits at the 89th 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 6,837 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 North Salt Lake at the 85th percentile, close to its 89th-percentile risk score.
Where North Salt Lake's buildings actually sit
71.6% of North Salt Lake's 6,837 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 4.6% Direct and 23.9% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone. At 6,837 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
North Salt Lake against the rest of the country
North Salt Lake's 89th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 53rd ranking inside Utah does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 36 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, North Salt Lake ranks 3,388 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,536 by building count (1 is largest). Within Utah alone, it ranks 154 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
North Salt Lake's 89th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 71.6% of North Salt Lake's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
North Salt Lake's 89th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond North Salt Lake, see the exposure-zones guide.