Valencia West, AZ
How exposed is Valencia West to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Valencia West lands at the 85th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 5,007 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 Valencia West at the 82nd percentile, close to its 85th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
53.2% of Valencia West's 5,007 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 2,664 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 36.2% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 10.6% are Minimal. At 5,007 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Valencia West ranks
Valencia West's 85th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 54th ranking inside Arizona does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 30 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Valencia West ranks 4,874 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,426 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arizona alone, it ranks 204 of 441 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arizona on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Valencia West
Valencia West's 85th-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
Because Direct exposure dominates in Valencia West (53.2%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Valencia West's 4,874-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Valencia West, see the exposure-zones guide.