Bethesda, AR
Bethesda, AR's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Bethesda's 181 buildings earn a 78th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Bethesda at the 82nd percentile, close to its 78th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Direct exposure dominates in Bethesda: 100% of its 181 buildings, versus 0% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
How Bethesda compares
There's little gap between Bethesda's 78th national percentile and its 75th percentile inside Arkansas, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bethesda ranks 6,829 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,575 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arkansas alone, it ranks 153 of 614 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arkansas on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Bethesda's 78th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 100% of Bethesda in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Bethesda's 6,829-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Bethesda, see the exposure-zones guide.