Queen Creek, AZ
Queen Creek, AZ's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Queen Creek at the 79th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 22,685 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Queen Creek's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 79th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 67.6% of Queen Creek's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 27.9% Direct and 4.6% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 22,685 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Queen Creek ranks
Queen Creek's 79th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 43rd ranking inside Arizona does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 37 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Queen Creek ranks 6,512 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 586 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 252 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
Queen Creek and the insurance market
Queen Creek's 79th-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
With 67.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Queen Creek gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Queen Creek's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Queen Creek's 6,512-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Queen Creek's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.