Waelder, TX
Waelder, TX's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Waelder at the 71st national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 662 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Waelder at the 72nd national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Waelder's buildings actually sit
Most of Waelder's buildings (61.2%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Waelder against the rest of the country
Inside Texas, Waelder sits at just the 33rd percentile even though it scores 71st 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, Waelder ranks 9,282 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,045 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,214 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Waelder and the insurance market
Waelder's 71st-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 Waelder
Waelder's 61.2% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
Where Waelder's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Waelder's 9,282-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Waelder's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.