Sanford, FL
How exposed is Sanford to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Sanford at the 91st national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 17,171 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Sanford at the 90th percentile, close to its 91st-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
60.1% of Sanford's 17,171 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 27.9% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 17,171 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Sanford against the rest of the country
Sanford's risk sits at a similar level relative to Florida (83rd percentile statewide) as it does nationally (91st) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sanford ranks 2,988 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 841 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 168 of 955 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Florida on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Sanford's 91st-percentile, very 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
Even with 60.1% of Sanford outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Sanford's figures come from
Sanford's 91st-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Sanford's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.