University Place, WA
University Place, WA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
University Place sits at the 10th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 11,766 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts University Place at the 10th percentile, close to its 10th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 3.3% of University Place's 11,766 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 96.7% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 11,766 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
University Place against the rest of the country
There's little gap between University Place's 10th national percentile and its 10th percentile inside Washington, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, University Place ranks 28,479 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,328 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 565 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 10th national percentile, University Place rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 96.7% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, University Place gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where University Place's figures come from
University Place's 10th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what University Place's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.