Sanibel, FL
Sanibel wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Sanibel lands at the 81st percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 5,471 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Sanibel at the 82nd percentile, close to its 81st-percentile risk score.
Where Sanibel's buildings actually sit
5,471 buildings are counted in Sanibel, and 45.1% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 24.2% in Direct exposure or the 30.8% rated Minimal. At 5,471 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Sanibel compares
Sanibel's 81st national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 52nd ranking inside Florida does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 30 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sanibel ranks 5,922 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,153 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 466 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
Sanibel's very high rating (81st 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.
Hardening a home in Sanibel
Because 45.1% of Sanibel'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 Sanibel's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Sanibel's 5,922-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Sanibel's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.