Columbus, WI
Columbus wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Columbus at the 30th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 2,341 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Columbus's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 30th percentile nationally.
Columbus's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 11.5% of Columbus's 2,341 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 88.6% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Where Columbus ranks
Compare Columbus's two percentiles: 63rd within Wisconsin, only 30th nationally — a gap of 34 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Columbus ranks 22,206 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,625 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 298 of 808 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Wisconsin on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Columbus's moderate rating (30th 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
Columbus's 88.6% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Columbus's 22,206-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Columbus, see the exposure-zones guide.