Chain-O-Lakes, IN
How exposed is Chain-O-Lakes to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Chain-O-Lakes at the 7th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 409 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 Chain-O-Lakes at the 7th percentile, close to its 7th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Chain-O-Lakes's 409 counted buildings, 70.9% carry Direct exposure and only 29.1% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Chain-O-Lakes compares
Within Indiana, Chain-O-Lakes ranks higher (45th percentile) than it does nationally (7th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Chain-O-Lakes ranks 29,338 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 19,050 by building count (1 is largest). Within Indiana alone, it ranks 526 of 967 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Indiana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Chain-O-Lakes
Chain-O-Lakes's low wildfire rating (7th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because Direct exposure dominates in Chain-O-Lakes (70.9%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Chain-O-Lakes's 29,338-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Chain-O-Lakes, see the exposure-zones guide.