St. Augustine Beach, FL
St. Augustine Beach wildfire risk explained
St. Augustine Beach sits at the 83rd 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 2,968 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, St. Augustine Beach's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 73rd percentile nationally.
St. Augustine Beach's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 64% of St. Augustine Beach's 2,968 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 13.2% Direct and 22.8% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
St. Augustine Beach against the rest of the country
Inside Florida, St. Augustine Beach sits at just the 57th percentile even though it scores 83rd 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, St. Augustine Beach ranks 5,354 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,485 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 405 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
St. Augustine Beach's 83rd-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.
Hardening a home in St. Augustine Beach
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in St. Augustine Beach (64% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where St. Augustine Beach's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind St. Augustine Beach's 5,354-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what St. Augustine Beach's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.