Columbia Heights, MN
Columbia Heights, MN's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Columbia Heights's 8,669 buildings earn a 23rd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Columbia Heights at the 25th national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Columbia Heights rates 98.2% Minimal exposure against just 1.8% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 8,669 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 8,669 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Columbia Heights against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Columbia Heights's 23rd national percentile and its 26th percentile inside Minnesota, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Columbia Heights ranks 24,428 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,920 by building count (1 is largest). Within Minnesota alone, it ranks 675 of 914 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Minnesota on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Columbia Heights's moderate rating (23rd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Columbia Heights
Even with 98.2% of Columbia Heights 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.
Where Columbia Heights's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Columbia Heights's 24,428-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Columbia Heights's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.