Peralta, NM
How exposed is Peralta to wildfire?
Peralta sits at the 64th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 2,354 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 Peralta at the 63rd percentile, close to its 64th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Peralta's 2,354 counted buildings, 88.8% carry Direct exposure and only 0.3% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Where Peralta ranks
Peralta's 64th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 35th ranking inside New Mexico does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 29 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Peralta ranks 11,319 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,601 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 320 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Peralta's 64th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Peralta's 88.8% 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
Peralta's 64th-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 Peralta, see the exposure-zones guide.