Tucumcari, NM
How exposed is Tucumcari to wildfire?
USFS scores Tucumcari at the 84th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 4,030 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Tucumcari at the 83rd percentile, close to its 84th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 65.3% of Tucumcari's 4,030 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 10.4% Direct and 24.4% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Tucumcari compares
Inside New Mexico, Tucumcari sits at just the 60th percentile even though it scores 84th 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, Tucumcari ranks 5,083 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,215 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 201 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Tucumcari
At the 84th percentile nationally, Tucumcari carries the very high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Tucumcari (65.3% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Tucumcari's 84th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Tucumcari, see the exposure-zones guide.