Van, TX
Van wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Van at the 73rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 1,397 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Van at the 74th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Van's building exposure, zone by zone
77.9% of Van's 1,397 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 22.1% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
How Van compares
Inside Texas, Van sits at just the 39th percentile even though it scores 73rd 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, Van ranks 8,554 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,641 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,101 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Van and the insurance market
Van's 73rd-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 Van
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Van (77.9% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Van's figures come from
Van's 73rd-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 Van's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.