Waikele, HI
Waikele wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Waikele at the 93rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 1,505 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Waikele at the 88th percentile, close to its 93rd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Waikele's buildings (95.4%) 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.
How Waikele compares
Waikele's 93rd national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 59th ranking inside Hawaii does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 33 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Waikele ranks 2,361 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,148 by building count (1 is largest). Within Hawaii alone, it ranks 67 of 163 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Hawaii on its state page.
Waikele and the insurance market
At the 93rd percentile nationally, Waikele carries the very high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Waikele (95.4% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,505 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Waikele. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Waikele, see the exposure-zones guide.