Beaver Dam, WI
How exposed is Beaver Dam to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Beaver Dam lands at the 33rd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 6,928 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Beaver Dam at the 34th percentile, close to its 33rd-percentile risk score.
Beaver Dam's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Beaver Dam's buildings (96.1% of 6,928) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 6,928 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Beaver Dam against the rest of the country
Within Wisconsin, Beaver Dam ranks higher (76th percentile) than it does nationally (33rd) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Beaver Dam ranks 21,006 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,499 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 196 of 808 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Wisconsin on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Beaver Dam's moderate rating (33rd 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
Even with 96.1% of Beaver Dam 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
Beaver Dam's 33rd-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 Beaver Dam, see the exposure-zones guide.