Phoenix, AZ
Phoenix wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Phoenix lands at the 85th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 515,239 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Phoenix at the 82nd national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Phoenix's buildings actually sit
Phoenix rates 74.2% Minimal exposure against just 4.2% Direct and 21.5% Indirect — of 515,239 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 515,239 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Phoenix against the rest of the country
Phoenix ranks lower within Arizona (55th percentile statewide) than its 85th national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Phoenix ranks 4,842 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 201 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 85th percentile nationally, Phoenix carries the very high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Phoenix's 74.2% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Phoenix's 4,842-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Phoenix, see the exposure-zones guide.