Alpena, AR
Alpena wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Alpena at the 78th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 287 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Alpena at the 80th percentile, close to its 78th-percentile risk score.
Alpena's building exposure, zone by zone
Indirect exposure is dominant in Alpena (60.6% of 287 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 39.4% sit in the Direct zone.
Alpena against the rest of the country
Alpena scores 78th nationally and 72nd within Arkansas — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Alpena ranks 7,079 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,980 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arkansas alone, it ranks 170 of 614 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arkansas on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Alpena's 78th-percentile, 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 60.6% of Alpena's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Alpena's 7,079-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Alpena, see the exposure-zones guide.