Carleton, MI
Carleton wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Carleton at the 9th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 1,499 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Carleton at the 10th percentile, close to its 9th-percentile risk score.
Where Carleton's buildings actually sit
Carleton rates 86.1% Minimal exposure against just 13.9% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 1,499 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Where Carleton ranks
Compare Carleton's two percentiles: 28th within Michigan, only 9th nationally — a gap of 19 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Carleton ranks 28,716 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,173 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 538 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Carleton
Carleton's low rating (9th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 86.1% of Carleton outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Carleton's 28,716-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Carleton, see the exposure-zones guide.