Brainard, NE
Brainard wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Brainard at the 77th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 285 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Brainard's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 68th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Brainard rates 86.7% Minimal exposure against just 13.3% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 285 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Brainard against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Brainard's 77th national percentile and its 81st percentile inside Nebraska, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Brainard ranks 7,283 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 22,037 by building count (1 is largest). Within Nebraska alone, it ranks 112 of 583 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Nebraska on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Brainard
Brainard's 77th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 86.7% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Brainard gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Brainard's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 285 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Brainard. The exposure-zones guide covers what Brainard's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.