Butte City, ID
Butte City wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Butte City at the 90th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 58 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Butte City at the 89th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Butte City's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 86.2% of Butte City's 58 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 13.8% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Butte City ranks
Butte City's 90th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 68th ranking inside Idaho does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 23 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Butte City ranks 3,050 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,705 by building count (1 is largest). Within Idaho alone, it ranks 76 of 232 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Idaho on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Butte City
Butte City's 90th-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
Butte City's 86.2% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
Where Butte City's figures come from
Butte City's 90th-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 Butte City's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.