Big Lake, AK
Big Lake, AK's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Big Lake's 3,317 buildings earn a 89th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Big Lake's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 88th percentile nationally.
Where Big Lake's buildings actually sit
Direct exposure dominates in Big Lake: 92.3% of its 3,317 buildings, versus 4.3% Indirect and 3.4% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Big Lake ranks
Big Lake's 89th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 74th ranking inside Alaska does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 15 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Big Lake ranks 3,390 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,021 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alaska alone, it ranks 83 of 322 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alaska on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Big Lake's very high rating (89th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Big Lake's 92.3% 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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Big Lake's 3,390-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Big Lake, see the exposure-zones guide.