Alden, MN
How exposed is Alden to wildfire?
USFS scores Alden at the 6th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 451 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Alden at the 5th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Alden's buildings (78.1% of 451) 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.
Alden against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Alden's 6th national percentile and its 9th percentile inside Minnesota, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Alden ranks 29,634 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,259 by building count (1 is largest). Within Minnesota alone, it ranks 829 of 914 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Minnesota on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Alden
At the 6th national percentile, Alden rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
With 78.1% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Alden 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
Alden's 6th-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 Alden, see the exposure-zones guide.