Beecher, MI
Beecher wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Beecher lands at the 8th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 5,475 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 Beecher at the 9th percentile, close to its 8th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
88.2% of Beecher's 5,475 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 11.8% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 5,475 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Beecher against the rest of the country
Beecher's 25th-percentile standing inside Michigan outpaces its 8th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Beecher ranks 28,906 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,150 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 554 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
Beecher and the insurance market
Beecher's low wildfire rating (8th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 88.2% of Beecher 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Beecher's 28,906-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Beecher, see the exposure-zones guide.