Valparaiso, FL
Valparaiso wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Valparaiso at the 76th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 2,602 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Valparaiso at the 76th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Valparaiso's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 72.1% of Valparaiso's 2,602 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 26.3% Direct and 1.6% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Valparaiso ranks
Inside Florida, Valparaiso sits at just the 39th percentile even though it scores 76th 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, Valparaiso ranks 7,559 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,091 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 585 of 955 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Florida on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Valparaiso's 76th-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.
Hardening a home in Valparaiso
Because 72.1% of Valparaiso's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Valparaiso's figures come from
Valparaiso's 76th-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 Valparaiso's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.