Sells, AZ
Sells, AZ's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Sells lands at the 84th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 1,064 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Sells's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 80th percentile nationally.
Sells's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Sells's 1,064 counted buildings, 76.5% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Sells compares
Inside Arizona, Sells sits at just the 51st percentile even though it scores 84th 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, Sells ranks 5,191 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,495 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 217 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
Sells and the insurance market
Sells's 84th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Sells's 76.5% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,064 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Sells. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Sells, see the exposure-zones guide.