Bellefontaine, OH
How exposed is Bellefontaine to wildfire?
USFS scores Bellefontaine at the 12th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 5,995 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Bellefontaine at the 13th percentile, close to its 12th-percentile risk score.
Bellefontaine's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 14.9% of Bellefontaine's 5,995 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0.6% carry Indirect; the remaining 84.6% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 5,995 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Bellefontaine against the rest of the country
Bellefontaine's 37th-percentile standing inside Ohio outpaces its 12th 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, Bellefontaine ranks 27,615 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,878 by building count (1 is largest). Within Ohio alone, it ranks 793 of 1,264 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Ohio on its state page.
Bellefontaine and the insurance market
Bellefontaine's low rating (12th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Bellefontaine
Even with 84.6% of Bellefontaine 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.
Where Bellefontaine's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 5,995 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Bellefontaine. The exposure-zones guide covers what Bellefontaine's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.