Toppenish, WA
How exposed is Toppenish to wildfire?
USFS scores Toppenish at the 69th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 2,748 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Toppenish at the 71st national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 97.3% of Toppenish's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 2.7% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Where Toppenish ranks
Toppenish's risk sits at a similar level relative to Washington (71st percentile statewide) as it does nationally (69th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Toppenish ranks 9,881 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,853 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 183 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
Toppenish and the insurance market
Toppenish's 69th-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 97.3% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Toppenish gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Toppenish's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Toppenish's 9,881-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Toppenish's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.