Wildfire risk in Santa Cruz County varies a lot by location. In the places we scored, the overall score runs from 38.5 in Nogales to 83.1 near Rio Rico, with a county midpoint of 67.2.
We scored 160 points across Santa Cruz County on the same 0–100 scale a Satelife address report uses, and they do not land in one place. 19% of them come out Very High, while 10% are Moderate. Which end your own parcel sits at is not something a county map can tell you.
FEMA NRI also rates Santa Cruz County: all-hazards risk Relatively Moderate · social vulnerability Very High · community resilience Very Low · annualised wildfire frequency 0.0129.
Sources: FEMA National Risk Index 1.20.0 (Dec 2025), county record · USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities v2.0, mean of the grid cells inside the county. Both describe the county as a whole, never an address in it.
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Most scored locations land in the High tier: 113 points were High, compared with 31 in Very High. No scored points were in the Low tier.
FEMA’s National Risk Index rates Santa Cruz County’s wildfire risk as Relatively High, and its wildfire expected annual loss as Relatively High. FEMA also rates the county’s overall all-hazards risk as Relatively Moderate.
Since 1984, 335,792 acres have burned in Santa Cruz County fire perimeters, and 42.6% of the county has burned over that period. The record shown here includes 184 fire perimeters since 1984.
The largest fire listed is Murphy (2011) at 70,739 acres. Other large fires in the list include Ryan (2002) at 38,155 acres and Florida (2005) at 23,209 acres.
The most recent large fire is Ranch (2025). Other recent fires in the county record include Tonto Canyon (2022), San Rafael (2022), and Beehive (2023).
Fire perimeters coloured by decade. Select a perimeter for its name, year and size.
Perimeter sources: NIFC Interagency Fire Perimeter History · WFIGS Interagency Perimeters · largest on record: Murphy 2011. Perimeters are simplified for display; acreage is the figure the source records.
Among the named communities, higher overall scores appear in Kino Springs and Elgin. Kino Springs is at 74.6, and Elgin is at 70.1.
A middle group includes Sonoita at 62.6, Patagonia at 62.5, and Tubac at 60.6. These are still elevated, just below the highest community values listed.
Lower listed community values include Nogales at 49.7 and Amado at 50.5. Rio Rico (54.9), Beyerville (54.8), and Tumacacori-Carmen (56.5) sit between those lower values and the county’s higher-scoring communities.
The score is the median of the sampled points nearest that community — a community-scale indicator, not a score for any individual property in it. Population comes from the community's own record where the source carries one.
Terrain-related wildfire risk is elevated in much of the county and does not vary as sharply as some other factors. The terrain score ranges from 55.0 near Nogales to 65.0 in Nogales.
Vegetation and fuels show a wider spread. This score runs from 44.0 in Nogales to 80.0 near Nogales, with a county midpoint of 69.6.
Fire weather was not measured for this county in the places we scored.
Fire weather was not measured at the sampled points in Santa Cruz County. The other four indicators on this page were, and the bars below show what they found.
Across the county, scores are not uniform. The lowest scored point is in Nogales at 38.5, while the highest scored point is near Rio Rico at 83.1.
Hazard-zone scoring also swings widely by location, from 10.0 near Nogales to 90.9 near Rio Rico. Fire-history scoring ranges from 5.0 in Nogales to 95.0 near Nogales, which shows very different prior-burn exposure from one area to another.
Each bar is what one part of the score covers across Santa Cruz County, on the same 0–100 scale. A long bar is a part of the risk that depends on where you are; a short one is the same almost everywhere.
The tick on each bar is the middle value. Tier boundaries — Moderate at 25, High at 50, Very High at 75 — are the faint lines behind them.
| Layer | Min | Median | Max | Lowest place | Highest place | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terrain | 55 | 65 | 65 | near Nogales | Nogales | 160 |
| Vegetation & fuels | 44 | 69.6 | 80 | Nogales | near Nogales | 160 |
| Hazard zone | 10 | 55.5 | 90.9 | near Nogales | near Rio Rico | 160 |
| Fire history | 5 | 90 | 95 | Nogales | near Nogales | 160 |
| Composite | 38.5 | 67.2 | 83.1 | Nogales | near Rio Rico | 160 |
Independently of Satelife's layers, the USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities grid puts the county's mean annual burn probability at 1.37% (90th percentile cell: 2.29%), with a mean conditional flame length of 4.27 ft. 69% of the 33,336 grid cells inside the county carry burnable fuel at all.
Source: USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities v2.0 (ImageServer, county extent).
CAL FIRE has no mapped Fire Hazard Severity Zone at 160 of the 160 sampled points — the zones cover Local Responsibility Areas, and most of this county is state or federal land. At 112 of them the USFS grid above supplied the hazard reading instead; at the remaining 48 the hazard weight is renormalised away rather than scored as low.
160 sample points on a ~2.3 km grid, plus one at the centre of each community, weighted with the Satelife county profile v1 · median layer coverage 90%. Scores are 0–100 and comparable within the county, not across states.
For property-level context, local hazard-zone scores differ sharply even within short distances. The highest listed hazard-zone value is 90.9 near Rio Rico, while a low point of 10.0 appears near Nogales.
Past-fire exposure also differs a lot by place. Fire-history scores range from 5.0 in Nogales to 95.0 near Nogales, with a midpoint of 90.0 across the county’s scored locations.
A separate USFS model reports mean annual burn probability as 1.37% and a 90th-percentile cell value of 2.29%. It also indicates that 68.5% of the county is in areas that can burn.
Find out where your Santa Cruz County parcel sits
Slope, the fuel touching the structure, the road out, the fire history within a mile — measured at your address, not averaged across the county.
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Every one of the 13 ZIP areas that touch Santa Cruz County — we run address-level reports in all of them. They are grouped by the median score of the points we sampled inside each, which is a neighbourhood-scale indicator and not a score for any property: two homes in the same ZIP routinely land in different tiers.
Very High 1 ZIP
High 8 ZIPs
No sampled point inside 4 ZIPs
85601 Tubac · 85615 · 85622 Amado · 85633
Grouped from 9 of 13 ZIP areas — the rest had no sample point fall inside them. The community shown is the nearest mapped place to the ZIP's centre.
ZIP areas are Census 2020 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas intersecting the county boundary.
The largest listed fire is Murphy (2011), at 70,739 acres.
The most recent large fire is Ranch (2025).
Most scored locations are in the High tier (113 points), with another 31 points in Very High.
No. Fire weather was not measured for this county in the places we scored.
FEMA’s National Risk Index rates Santa Cruz County’s wildfire risk as Relatively High, and its wildfire expected annual loss as Relatively High.
A county range shows the spread. An address-level Satelife report shows where in that spread your property actually sits — PDF, per-layer score, and a prioritized mitigation plan.
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