Colstrip, MT
Colstrip wildfire risk explained
Colstrip's 1,401 buildings earn a 97th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Colstrip's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 97th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Colstrip's buildings (61.9%) 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.
Colstrip against the rest of the country
Colstrip scores 97th nationally and 93rd within Montana — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Colstrip ranks 1,038 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,627 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 33 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Colstrip and the insurance market
Colstrip's 97th-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.
Hardening a home in Colstrip
Because 61.9% of Colstrip's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Colstrip's 97th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Colstrip, see the exposure-zones guide.