Columbia, LA
Columbia, LA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Columbia sits at the 50th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 236 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Columbia at the 51st national percentile — 1 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
USFS puts 51.3% of Columbia's 236 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 48.7% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Columbia ranks
There's little gap between Columbia's 50th national percentile and its 57th percentile inside Louisiana, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Columbia ranks 15,848 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 23,593 by building count (1 is largest). Within Louisiana alone, it ranks 211 of 488 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Louisiana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Columbia
Columbia's elevated wildfire rating (50th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Columbia's 51.3% 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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Columbia's 15,848-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Columbia, see the exposure-zones guide.