San Marcos, TX
How exposed is San Marcos to wildfire?
San Marcos's 15,786 buildings earn a 72nd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, San Marcos's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 70th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Indirect exposure is dominant in San Marcos (53.5% of 15,786 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 24.9% sit in the Direct zone. At 15,786 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
San Marcos against the rest of the country
Inside Texas, San Marcos sits at just the 35th percentile even though it scores 72nd 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, San Marcos ranks 8,966 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 931 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,164 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
San Marcos and the insurance market
San Marcos's high rating (72nd 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 53.5% of San Marcos's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where San Marcos's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 15,786 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for San Marcos. The exposure-zones guide covers what San Marcos's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.