Detroit, MI
Detroit wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Detroit lands at the 6th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 309,208 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Detroit at the 7th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Detroit's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 99.4% of Detroit's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 0.6% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 309,208 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Detroit against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Detroit's 6th national percentile and its 15th percentile inside Michigan, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Detroit ranks 29,661 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 634 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Detroit
At the 6th national percentile, Detroit rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Detroit
Even with 99.4% of Detroit 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.
More on how this number was built
Detroit's 6th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Detroit, see the exposure-zones guide.