Allendale, MI
Allendale, MI's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Allendale lands at the 18th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 5,807 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Allendale at the 19th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 36.7% of Allendale's 5,807 buildings carry Direct exposure and 14.1% carry Indirect; the remaining 49.2% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 5,807 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Allendale against the rest of the country
Within Michigan, Allendale ranks higher (61st percentile) than it does nationally (18th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Allendale ranks 25,775 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,971 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 287 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
Allendale and the insurance market
Allendale's low wildfire rating (18th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 49.2% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Allendale 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Allendale's 25,775-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Allendale, see the exposure-zones guide.