Duluth, MN
Duluth, MN's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Duluth at the 27th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 37,521 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Duluth at the 26th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Duluth's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 17.8% of Duluth's 37,521 buildings carry Direct exposure and 31.8% carry Indirect; the remaining 50.4% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 37,521 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Duluth ranks
There's little gap between Duluth's 27th national percentile and its 31st percentile inside Minnesota, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Duluth ranks 23,165 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 272 by building count (1 is largest). Within Minnesota alone, it ranks 627 of 914 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Minnesota on its state page.
Duluth and the insurance market
At the 27th national percentile, Duluth rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
With 50.4% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Duluth gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Duluth's figures come from
Duluth's 27th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Duluth's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.