Arctic Village, AK
Arctic Village wildfire risk explained
Arctic Village sits at the 75th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 96 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Arctic Village at the 78th percentile, close to its 75th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Direct exposure dominates in Arctic Village: 100% of its 96 buildings, versus 0% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
How Arctic Village compares
Inside Alaska, Arctic Village sits at just the 58th percentile even though it scores 75th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Arctic Village ranks 7,773 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,212 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alaska alone, it ranks 135 of 322 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alaska on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Arctic Village's 75th-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.
Hardening a home in Arctic Village
Because Direct exposure dominates in Arctic Village (100%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
Where Arctic Village's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Arctic Village's 7,773-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Arctic Village's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.