Plains, TX
Plains wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Plains at the 95th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 873 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Plains at the 94th percentile, close to its 95th-percentile risk score.
Where Plains's buildings actually sit
Most of Plains's buildings (78.1%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Plains against the rest of the country
Plains scores 95th nationally and 94th within Texas — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Plains ranks 1,716 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,966 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 104 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Plains and the insurance market
Plains's 95th-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 78.1% of Plains'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.
Where Plains's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Plains's 1,716-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Plains's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.