Vail, AZ
Vail wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Vail lands at the 91st percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 5,848 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Vail at the 90th percentile, close to its 91st-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
5,848 buildings are counted in Vail, and 59.1% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal. At 5,848 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Vail ranks
Vail ranks lower within Arizona (65th percentile statewide) than its 91st national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Vail ranks 2,823 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,946 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 155 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
Vail and the insurance market
Vail's 91st-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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 59.1% of Vail in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Vail's 2,823-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Vail, see the exposure-zones guide.