Austin, MN
Austin, MN's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Austin at the 19th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 11,399 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Austin's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 18th percentile nationally.
Austin's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 8.9% of Austin's 11,399 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 91.2% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 11,399 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Austin against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Austin's 19th national percentile and its 22nd percentile inside Minnesota, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Austin ranks 25,626 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,384 by building count (1 is largest). Within Minnesota alone, it ranks 713 of 914 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Minnesota on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Austin
Austin's low wildfire rating (19th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 91.2% of Austin outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Austin's 19th-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 Austin, see the exposure-zones guide.