Plainview, TX
How exposed is Plainview to wildfire?
USFS scores Plainview at the 69th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 9,719 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Plainview's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 65th percentile nationally.
Plainview's building exposure, zone by zone
90.9% of Plainview's 9,719 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 9.1% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 9,719 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Plainview against the rest of the country
Plainview's 69th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 27th ranking inside Texas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 41 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Plainview ranks 9,940 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,684 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,302 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Plainview
Plainview's 69th-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
Even with 90.9% of Plainview outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Plainview's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Plainview's 9,940-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Plainview's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.