Provo, UT
Provo, UT's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Provo sits at the 95th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 23,345 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 Provo at the 92nd percentile, close to its 95th-percentile risk score.
Provo's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 55.7% of Provo's 23,345 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 5.1% Direct and 39.2% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 23,345 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Provo ranks
Provo scores 95th nationally and 81st within Utah — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Provo ranks 1,560 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 556 by building count (1 is largest). Within Utah alone, it ranks 64 of 326 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Utah on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Provo
Provo's very high rating (95th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
What would actually reduce this score
Provo's 55.7% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Provo's 95th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Provo, see the exposure-zones guide.