Wenatchee, WA
How exposed is Wenatchee to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Wenatchee at the 98th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 13,036 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Wenatchee at the 99th percentile, close to its 98th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 65.1% of Wenatchee's 13,036 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 7.2% Direct and 27.7% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 13,036 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Wenatchee ranks
Wenatchee's risk sits at a similar level relative to Washington (96th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (98th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Wenatchee ranks 647 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,168 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 29 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
Wenatchee and the insurance market
Wenatchee's very high rating (98th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Wenatchee (65.1% 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 13,036 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Wenatchee. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Wenatchee, see the exposure-zones guide.