Sunnyside, WA
Sunnyside wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Sunnyside at the 48th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 5,130 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Sunnyside's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 50th percentile nationally.
Sunnyside's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 92.7% of Sunnyside's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 7.3% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 5,130 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Sunnyside against the rest of the country
Sunnyside's risk sits at a similar level relative to Washington (61st percentile statewide) as it does nationally (48th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sunnyside ranks 16,564 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,364 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 245 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
Sunnyside and the insurance market
Sunnyside's elevated wildfire rating (48th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Hardening a home in Sunnyside
Sunnyside's 92.7% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Sunnyside's 48th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Sunnyside, see the exposure-zones guide.