Surprise, AZ
Surprise wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Surprise lands at the 77th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 56,686 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Surprise's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 76th percentile nationally.
Surprise's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 7.7% of Surprise's 56,686 buildings carry Direct exposure and 22.1% carry Indirect; the remaining 70.2% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 56,686 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Surprise compares
Surprise ranks lower within Arizona (39th percentile statewide) than its 77th national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Surprise ranks 7,236 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 148 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 271 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
Surprise and the insurance market
Surprise's 77th-percentile, 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
With 70.2% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Surprise gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 56,686 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Surprise. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Surprise, see the exposure-zones guide.