Benton City, WA
Benton City, WA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Benton City lands at the 95th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 1,506 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Benton City at the 96th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 66.7% of Benton City's 1,506 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 25.5% Direct and 7.8% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Benton City against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Benton City's 95th national percentile and its 87th percentile inside Washington, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Benton City ranks 1,498 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,144 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 80 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Benton City's very high rating (95th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Hardening a home in Benton City
Because 66.7% of Benton City's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Benton City's 1,498-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Benton City, see the exposure-zones guide.