Buffalo, ND
How exposed is Buffalo to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Buffalo lands at the 29th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 213 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 Buffalo at the 27th percentile, close to its 29th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 60.6% of Buffalo's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 39.4% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Where Buffalo ranks
Inside North Dakota, Buffalo sits at just the 12th percentile even though it scores 29th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Buffalo ranks 22,510 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,371 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Dakota alone, it ranks 356 of 402 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Dakota on its state page.
Buffalo and the insurance market
At the 29th national percentile, Buffalo rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Buffalo
With 60.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Buffalo gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Buffalo's 22,510-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Buffalo, see the exposure-zones guide.