Sonoita, AZ
How exposed is Sonoita to wildfire?
Sonoita sits at the 96th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 870 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Sonoita at the 98th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Sonoita's buildings actually sit
870 buildings are counted in Sonoita, and 99.3% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
How Sonoita compares
Inside Arizona, Sonoita sits at just the 79th percentile even though it scores 96th 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, Sonoita ranks 1,123 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,984 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 93 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Sonoita's very high rating (96th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Sonoita's 99.3% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Sonoita's 1,123-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Sonoita, see the exposure-zones guide.