Elk Creek, NE
How exposed is Elk Creek to wildfire?
USFS scores Elk Creek at the 86th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 96 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Elk Creek at the 82nd percentile, close to its 86th-percentile risk score.
Elk Creek's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 72.9% of Elk Creek's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 27.1% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Elk Creek against the rest of the country
Elk Creek's risk sits at a similar level relative to Nebraska (94th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (86th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Elk Creek ranks 4,380 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,240 by building count (1 is largest). Within Nebraska alone, it ranks 38 of 583 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Nebraska on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Elk Creek
Elk Creek's 86th-percentile, very high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Hardening a home in Elk Creek
Elk Creek's 72.9% 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 96 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Elk Creek. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Elk Creek, see the exposure-zones guide.