Beluga, AK
Beluga, AK's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Beluga sits at the 71st percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 161 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Beluga at the 68th national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Beluga's buildings actually sit
Direct exposure dominates in Beluga: 92.6% of its 161 buildings, versus 7.5% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
How Beluga compares
Beluga's 71st national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 55th ranking inside Alaska does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 17 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Beluga ranks 9,097 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 26,365 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alaska alone, it ranks 147 of 322 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alaska on its state page.
Beluga and the insurance market
Beluga's 71st-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Hardening a home in Beluga
Beluga's 92.6% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Beluga's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Beluga's 9,097-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Beluga's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.