Port Lavaca, TX
Port Lavaca, TX's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Port Lavaca lands at the 67th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 5,288 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Port Lavaca's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 66th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 78.6% of Port Lavaca's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 4.9% Direct and 16.5% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 5,288 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Port Lavaca against the rest of the country
Port Lavaca's 67th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 25th ranking inside Texas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 43 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Port Lavaca ranks 10,352 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,263 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,352 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Port Lavaca's 67th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Port Lavaca's 78.6% 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.
Where Port Lavaca's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Port Lavaca's 10,352-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Port Lavaca's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.