Sunsites, AZ
Sunsites wildfire risk explained
Sunsites sits at the 90th 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 533 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Sunsites at the 93rd national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Sunsites's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 52.4% of Sunsites's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 47.7% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 279 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
Where Sunsites ranks
Sunsites's 90th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 64th ranking inside Arizona does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 27 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sunsites ranks 3,107 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 16,819 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 161 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
Sunsites and the insurance market
Sunsites's 90th-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 Sunsites
Because Direct exposure dominates in Sunsites (52.4%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Sunsites's 3,107-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Sunsites, see the exposure-zones guide.