Blackfoot, MT
Blackfoot wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Blackfoot at the 86th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 64 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Blackfoot's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 87th percentile nationally.
Blackfoot's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Blackfoot's 64 counted buildings, 100% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Blackfoot against the rest of the country
Blackfoot's 86th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 64th ranking inside Montana does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 21 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Blackfoot ranks 4,509 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,511 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 170 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Blackfoot and the insurance market
Blackfoot's very high rating (86th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because Direct exposure dominates in Blackfoot (100%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
Where Blackfoot's figures come from
Blackfoot's 86th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Blackfoot's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.