Bayou Blue, LA
Bayou Blue, LA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Bayou Blue lands at the 39th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 7,022 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Bayou Blue at the 31st national percentile — 9 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 Bayou Blue's buildings (67.4%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone. At 7,022 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Bayou Blue ranks
Bayou Blue scores 39th nationally and 38th within Louisiana — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bayou Blue ranks 19,125 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,446 by building count (1 is largest). Within Louisiana alone, it ranks 303 of 488 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Louisiana on its state page.
Bayou Blue and the insurance market
Bayou Blue's moderate rating (39th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Bayou Blue's 67.4% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Bayou Blue's 19,125-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Bayou Blue, see the exposure-zones guide.