Palm Valley, FL
Palm Valley wildfire risk explained
Palm Valley sits at the 83rd 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 8,296 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 Palm Valley at the 80th percentile, close to its 83rd-percentile risk score.
Palm Valley's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Palm Valley: 43.6% of its 8,296 buildings, versus 22.2% Indirect and 34.2% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap. At 8,296 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Palm Valley against the rest of the country
Palm Valley ranks lower within Florida (59th percentile statewide) than its 83rd national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Palm Valley ranks 5,226 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,010 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 392 of 955 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Florida on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Palm Valley
Palm Valley's 83rd-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 Direct exposure dominates in Palm Valley (43.6%), 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Palm Valley's 5,226-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Palm Valley, see the exposure-zones guide.