West Palm Beach, FL
West Palm Beach, FL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts West Palm Beach at the 97th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 29,050 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 West Palm Beach at the 97th percentile, close to its 97th-percentile risk score.
West Palm Beach's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of West Palm Beach's buildings (79.5% of 29,050) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 29,050 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
West Palm Beach against the rest of the country
West Palm Beach scores 97th nationally and 97th within Florida — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, West Palm Beach ranks 813 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 405 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 29 of 955 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Florida on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in West Palm Beach
West Palm Beach's 97th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 79.5% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, West Palm Beach gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
West Palm Beach's 97th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond West Palm Beach, see the exposure-zones guide.