Sacaton, AZ
How exposed is Sacaton to wildfire?
USFS scores Sacaton at the 75th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 1,061 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Sacaton at the 77th national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Direct exposure dominates in Sacaton: 64.2% of its 1,061 buildings, versus 35.8% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Sacaton ranks
Inside Arizona, Sacaton sits at just the 36th percentile even though it scores 75th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sacaton ranks 7,995 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,511 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 282 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
Sacaton and the insurance market
Sacaton's 75th-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 64.2% of Sacaton in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,061 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Sacaton. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Sacaton, see the exposure-zones guide.