Dorchester, NE
How exposed is Dorchester to wildfire?
USFS scores Dorchester at the 9th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 441 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Dorchester at the 6th national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Dorchester's building exposure, zone by zone
86.9% of Dorchester's 441 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 13.2% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
Where Dorchester ranks
There's little gap between Dorchester's 9th national percentile and its 4th percentile inside Nebraska, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Dorchester ranks 28,690 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,439 by building count (1 is largest). Within Nebraska alone, it ranks 558 of 583 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Nebraska on its state page.
Dorchester and the insurance market
Dorchester's low rating (9th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
With 86.9% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Dorchester gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Dorchester's 9th-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 Dorchester, see the exposure-zones guide.