Bluffton, IN
Bluffton, IN's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Bluffton at the 3rd national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 5,014 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 Bluffton at the 3rd percentile, close to its 3rd-percentile risk score.
Where Bluffton's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 90% of Bluffton's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 10% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 5,014 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Bluffton ranks
Within Indiana, Bluffton ranks higher (21st percentile) than it does nationally (3rd) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bluffton ranks 30,603 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,424 by building count (1 is largest). Within Indiana alone, it ranks 765 of 967 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Indiana on its state page.
Bluffton and the insurance market
Bluffton's low rating (3rd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Bluffton's 90% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Bluffton's figures come from
Bluffton's 3rd-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 Bluffton's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.