Buhl, ID
Buhl wildfire risk explained
Buhl sits at the 89th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 2,294 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Buhl at the 90th percentile, close to its 89th-percentile risk score.
Buhl's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Buhl's buildings (53.1%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
How Buhl compares
Inside Idaho, Buhl sits at just the 65th percentile even though it scores 89th 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, Buhl ranks 3,338 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,709 by building count (1 is largest). Within Idaho alone, it ranks 83 of 232 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Idaho on its state page.
Buhl and the insurance market
Buhl's 89th-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
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Buhl (53.1% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Buhl's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Buhl's 3,338-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Buhl's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.