Waimalu, HI
Waimalu wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Waimalu lands at the 96th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 1,657 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Waimalu at the 95th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Waimalu's buildings actually sit
1,657 buildings are counted in Waimalu, and 92.8% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 7.2% in Direct exposure or the 0% rated Minimal.
How Waimalu compares
Waimalu scores 96th nationally and 83rd within Hawaii — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Waimalu ranks 1,288 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,569 by building count (1 is largest). Within Hawaii alone, it ranks 28 of 163 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Hawaii on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Waimalu
Waimalu's 96th-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
Waimalu's 92.8% 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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Waimalu's 1,288-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Waimalu, see the exposure-zones guide.