Bonner-West Riverside, MT
Bonner-West Riverside, MT's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Bonner-West Riverside lands at the 96th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 1,019 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Bonner-West Riverside at the 95th percentile, close to its 96th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
1,019 buildings are counted in Bonner-West Riverside, and 84.3% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 15.7% in Direct exposure or the 0% rated Minimal.
How Bonner-West Riverside compares
There's little gap between Bonner-West Riverside's 96th national percentile and its 92nd percentile inside Montana, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bonner-West Riverside ranks 1,168 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,808 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 39 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Bonner-West Riverside's 96th-percentile, very 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 84.3% of Bonner-West Riverside'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.
Where Bonner-West Riverside's figures come from
Bonner-West Riverside's 96th-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 Bonner-West Riverside's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.