Big Piney, WY
How exposed is Big Piney to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Big Piney at the 70th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 393 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Big Piney at the 72nd percentile, close to its 70th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Big Piney's buildings (65.7%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Where Big Piney ranks
Big Piney ranks lower within Wyoming (30th percentile statewide) than its 70th national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Big Piney ranks 9,377 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 19,359 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wyoming alone, it ranks 134 of 192 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Wyoming on its state page.
Big Piney and the insurance market
Big Piney's 70th-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
Because 65.7% of Big Piney'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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 393 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Big Piney. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Big Piney, see the exposure-zones guide.