Puyallup, WA
How exposed is Puyallup to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Puyallup at the 12th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 15,704 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Puyallup's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 13th percentile nationally.
Puyallup's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 4.5% of Puyallup's 15,704 buildings carry Direct exposure and 1.3% carry Indirect; the remaining 94.3% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 15,704 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Puyallup ranks
Puyallup scores 12th nationally and 14th within Washington — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Puyallup ranks 27,815 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 936 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 541 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Puyallup
Puyallup's low wildfire rating (12th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
What would actually reduce this score
Puyallup's 94.3% 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 Puyallup's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 15,704 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Puyallup. The exposure-zones guide covers what Puyallup's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.