Bear Dance, MT
How exposed is Bear Dance to wildfire?
USFS scores Bear Dance at the 98th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 459 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Bear Dance at the 97th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Bear Dance's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Bear Dance's 459 counted buildings, 99.8% carry Direct exposure and only 0.2% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Bear Dance against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Bear Dance's 98th national percentile and its 99th percentile inside Montana, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bear Dance ranks 510 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,078 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 6 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Bear Dance
At the 98th percentile nationally, Bear Dance carries the very high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
What would actually reduce this score
With 99.8% of Bear Dance in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 459 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Bear Dance. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Bear Dance, see the exposure-zones guide.