Kendall County, Texas · 2026

Wildfire risk in Kendall County: a low score with Hill Country geometry

Our Satelife report for Wasp Creek Road near Boerne returns 24.73 / 100 — Low, with 0.0% modelled probability of flames over four feet. The same property scores 75 / 100 on AI vision, reflecting trees close to the structure, and the Boerne-area community analysis still detects a 15.9-metre chokepoint on a network serving 161 structures.

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Satellite locator map of Kendall County, Texas, with the county boundary outlined and Boerne, Comfort and Bergheim marked on the Hill Country edge west of San Antonio — Kendall County on satellite imagery — Boerne, Comfort and Bergheim marked across the oak-juniper Hill Country west of San Antonio. Imagery © Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics.

Local context

Boerne sits where metro growth meets oak-juniper country

Kendall County is one of the fast-growing western edges of Greater San Antonio: Boerne on the Interstate 10 corridor, Fair Oaks Ranch on the south edge, rural ranchettes and gated streets extending north and west into live oak, juniper and creek-drainage terrain. The county does not have one universally recognized named fire in the way Bastrop or Hutchinson does. That is not a weakness in the page; it is the point. In Kendall County the underwriting question is often not “did this exact subdivision burn in a headline event?” but “what does this parcel look like now, and what happens if a wind-driven grass-and-brush start reaches it?”

That is why the Boerne property run is useful. It reads present-tense exposure rather than trying to force the county into a famous-incident template: climate at 59.2 / 100, terrain at 40 / 100, vision at 75 / 100, and a community road network that is broadly redundant but not perfectly wide all the way through.

Historic streetscape in Boerne, Texas, showing the built environment at the center of Kendall County’s growth corridor — Boerne, Kendall County — the county seat and the center of the county’s fastest housing growth. Source: Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Sources: Kendall County growth pattern and local geography from county and regional planning materials; parcel and community figures from Satelife reports generated 25 July 2026.

Terrain & fuel

Low composite, but the parcel still reads tree-forward

The Boerne close-up makes the pattern visible: houses cut into Hill Country vegetation rather than replacing it. The property report’s highest layer is the AI vision score at 75 / 100, meaning the imagery read sees mature trees and combustible landscaping close enough to the structure to matter even though the broader fuel model is not extreme. The climate layer at 59.2 / 100 and terrain at 40 / 100 push in the same direction.

Satellite close-up of the Boerne-area case-study community in Kendall County, showing houses dispersed through tree cover and winding Hill Country roads — Boerne-area community close-up — housing dispersed through continuous tree cover and curved road geometry rather than a square grid. Imagery © Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics.

The layers that keep the score low are the ones Texas property owners need to interpret carefully. Vegetation/fuel reads only 23.3 / 100, hazard 14.2 / 100, fire-spread simulation 5 / 100, fire history 5 / 100, and road access 0 / 100 at the parcel itself. In other words: the fuel bed immediately around this address is not what a Panhandle grass parcel or a burn-scar subdivision looks like. The reason to keep the page is not that the property is already severe. It is that the structure sits in a landscape that can become harder to defend if tree density and access discipline drift.

Evacuation

Plenty of exits overall, but still a 15.9-metre pinch point

The community-scale analysis is more reassuring than many Texas county pages we have published, and it is still not perfect. Across the analyzed Boerne-area footprint, Satelife finds 109 independent exits for 161 structures — a much stronger ratio than the tighter lake and canyon communities elsewhere in the Hill Country.

161structures in the analyzed community footprint

109independent road exits across 2,944.6 hectares

1.48structures per exit route

15.9 mnarrowest single point of failure detected on the network

4fire stations within the search radius

3.4 minfastest modelled engine time; hotspot zones at 5.5–9.4 minutes

Read the exits and the chokepoint together. Kendall County’s case study is not a one-road peninsula like Steiner Ranch and not a nine-exit reservoir settlement like Graford. It is a relatively healthy network that still narrows enough to matter if one stalled vehicle, one gate, or one shoulder fire takes away the wrong segment at the wrong time.

Excerpt from a Satelife wildfire risk report for Wasp Creek Road near Boerne showing suppression reach, nearby stations and the property road-access assessment — **Report excerpt** — Road access: suppression reach & egress, Satelife Wildfire Risk Report, Wasp Creek Road, Boerne TX 78006 (July 2026). Drive-times are modelled on the current public road graph and OSM-mapped stations; decision support, not an evacuation plan.

Hazard framing

A low score because the flame-length model is quiet today

The cleanest way to understand Kendall County’s case study is to start with what the federal fire behaviour layer does not say. At this parcel, the USFS-modelled probability of flames over four feet is 0.0%; over eight feet it is also 0.0%. That is why the composite lands at 24.73 / 100 Low instead of in the Moderate band.

24.73property composite score — Low tier

75AI vision layer — the property’s highest score

59.2fire-weather climatology layer

0.0%probability of flames over 4 ft and over 8 ft

The consequence is straightforward. Kendall County’s published story is less about current flame intensity than about maintaining a low-risk condition in a growth corridor that is steadily moving outward into the same wooded terrain the vision layer sees so clearly. A low score is not a reason to stop maintaining the lot. It is evidence that the lot is worth maintaining.

Kendall County is what a Texas page looks like when the federal flame-length model is quiet but the parcel imagery still says “keep the trees and the driveway under control.”

Case study

One address on Wasp Creek Road, scored today

We ran a full Satelife wildfire-risk report for a property on Wasp Creek Road, Boerne TX 78006. The composite returns 24.73 / 100 — Low tier, at 0.82 confidence, from eight independently scored and weighted layers.

Excerpt from a Satelife wildfire risk report for Wasp Creek Road near Boerne showing per-layer contributions including Vision 75, Climate 59.2, Terrain 40, Vegetation 23.3 and Hazard 14.2 — **Report excerpt** — Per-layer contributions, Satelife Wildfire Risk Report, Wasp Creek Road, Boerne TX 78006 (25 July 2026). Composite 24.73/100, Low tier, scored under the United States (`usa_generic`) adapter.

What drives the score:

AI vision: 75 / 100. The report’s highest layer, driven by what the imagery sees immediately around the structure.
Climate: 59.2 / 100. Thirty-year ERA5 fire-weather climatology for this location.
Terrain: 40 / 100. Hill Country relief matters, but it is not steep canyon country at this parcel.
Vegetation: 23.3 / 100 and hazard 14.2 / 100. These are the main reasons the composite stays Low.
Road access: 0 / 100. The parcel-level road picture is currently strong even though the wider community network still carries a 15.9-metre pinch point.

For Kendall County the useful reading is not “24.73 means no problem.” It is “24.73 means the lot is still in the keep-it-this-way phase rather than the rebuild-after-loss phase.”

The mitigation plan reflects that posture: maintain current defensible space and home hardening. This is one of the few Texas case studies where the recommendation is to hold a good line rather than to correct an obvious failure.

Insurance & real estate

A low score helps only if you can document it

Kendall County sits in exactly the kind of Texas market where wildfire diligence matters more than the statute book. Buyers are looking at custom homes, acreage lots and fast-appreciating western fringe property, but the state gives them no wildfire zone designation to check and no seller form that names one. Texas Property Code §5.008 does not contain a wildfire hazard item because Texas publishes no statewide hazard map.

Nor is there a mitigation-discount mandate comparable to California’s SB 1060. If a carrier gives credit for defensible space, driveway width or ember-resistant hardening, it is making an underwriting judgment rather than complying with a statutory schedule. The fallback remains the Texas FAIR Plan Association, reached only after at least two admitted carriers decline comparable coverage.

That makes a parcel report practical documentation rather than marketing copy. In Kendall County, where many properties score in the quiet middle rather than at headline extremes, the value is in proving what the structure and access look like before the next drought year forces the conversation.

Sources: Texas Department of Insurance · Texas FAIR Plan Association · Texas Property Code §5.008.

Risk reduction

What Kendall County homeowners can actually do

The standard defensible-space sequence still applies: Zone 0 in the first five feet, Zone 1 out to thirty feet, Zone 2 out to a hundred where parcel size allows it. In Kendall County the highest value work is usually less about large-scale fuel reduction than about preserving clearance where it counts — trees trimmed away from the structure and roofline, ornamental vegetation kept out of the ember-catching zone, and gates and driveway width kept engine-usable.

The cleanest comparison is Hays County, another Hill Country page with a different constraint. Boerne’s property score is 24.73 / 100 Low and its community footprint has 1.48 structures per exit. Wimberley’s property score is 28.78 / 100 Moderate, with a road-access layer of 25 and 4.28 structures per exit. Kendall’s case study is the wider road network with the better present-tense fuel picture; Hays is the narrower network with the higher access penalty.

Coverage

ZIP codes we cover in Kendall County

Satelife runs address-level wildfire reports across every ZIP code in Kendall County. The ZIPs below are the Hill Country and Wildland-Urban Interface communities we are asked about most. One caveat that is the whole point of what we do: the risk score is computed for your parcel, not the ZIP, so two homes on the same street can land in different tiers. Find your area, then run your address.

ZIP code	Community	Why it is on the map
78006	Boerne / Sisterdale	Wasp Creek Road case study and the county’s main western WUI corridor
78013	Comfort	IH-10 corridor through oak-juniper hills and creek drainages
78004	Bergheim	Rural Hill Country west of San Antonio’s growth edge
78015	Fair Oaks Ranch	South-county interface between subdivision growth and tree cover

ZIP areas per USPS. Texas publishes no statewide fire hazard severity zone map; Wildland-Urban Interface framing per Texas A&M Forest Service.

Where to go next

Kendall County wildfire risk in context

Texas wildfire risk The statewide picture: no hazard map, eight county pages, three fire regimes Hays County wildfire risk Wimberley, the Oak Grove Fire context, and a tighter road-access score Comal County wildfire risk Bulverde, growth-driven readiness planning, and unusually high exit redundancy Travis County wildfire risk Austin’s juniper WUI, Steiner Ranch, Lakeway case study Create a wildfire evacuation plan Zones, egress routes, refuge areas How Satelife calculates wildfire risk Data sources, score composition, honest limits Run a wildfire risk report PDF + score + mitigation plan

FAQ

Frequently asked questions about Kendall County wildfire risk

Is Kendall County a high wildfire risk county?

Not on the numbers we published here. A Satelife report for Wasp Creek Road near Boerne returns 24.73 / 100 in the Low tier, with 0.0% modelled probability of flame lengths over four feet and over eight feet. But the same report scores AI vision at 75 / 100 and the Boerne-area community analysis still finds a 15.9-metre chokepoint on the road network. In Kendall County the headline is low, while the reason to keep paying attention is access geometry and tree cover around the structure.

Why does a Boerne parcel score low if it sits in the Hill Country?

Because the heaviest-weight layer in a Texas report is the hazard layer, and Texas publishes no fire hazard severity zone map. Satelife backfills hazard from the U.S. Forest Service Wildfire Risk to Communities model; at this parcel it reads only 14.2 / 100. That low hazard number, plus 23.3 / 100 vegetation and 0 / 100 road access, keeps the composite down even though the parcel imagery read is 75 / 100 and the fire-weather climatology is 59.2 / 100.

How many ways out does the Boerne-area case study have?

The community analysis finds 109 independent road exits serving 161 structures across 2,944.6 hectares, or 1.48 structures per exit. That is better redundancy than many Texas WUI communities. The caveat is that the same network still narrows to a 15.9-metre single point of failure, so resilience is not the same thing as unlimited capacity.

Does Kendall County have an official wildfire hazard zone map?

No. Texas does not publish a statewide wildfire hazard severity map equivalent to CAL FIRE’s FHSZ system. That is why this page leans on a real parcel report, a community evacuation analysis, and the per-layer breakdown rather than on a state designation.

What mitigation does the Boerne property report recommend?

Maintain current defensible space and home hardening. That sounds modest because the property already scores low overall; the point is to keep it there as Hill Country vegetation matures and development extends farther into the oak-juniper edge.

Scores and evacuation figures on this page are drawn from Satelife wildfire-risk reports generated on 25 July 2026 under the United States (usa_generic) adapter: a property report for Wasp Creek Road, Boerne TX 78006, and a community analysis for the Boerne-area case study. Texas publishes no statewide fire-hazard-severity map, so the hazard layer is backfilled from the USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities model. Drive-times are modelled on OSM-mapped stations and the current road graph. Satelife reports are informational decision support — not a substitute for official evacuation orders, state or federal hazard determinations, or an insurer’s underwriting judgment.