Elkhart Lake, WI
How exposed is Elkhart Lake to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Elkhart Lake at the 28th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 730 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Elkhart Lake's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 29th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
57.1% of Elkhart Lake's 730 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 34.9% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
Elkhart Lake against the rest of the country
Compare Elkhart Lake's two percentiles: 58th within Wisconsin, only 28th nationally — a gap of 30 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Elkhart Lake ranks 22,707 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 14,342 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 341 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
Elkhart Lake's moderate wildfire rating (28th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Hardening a home in Elkhart Lake
Elkhart Lake's 57.1% 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.
Where Elkhart Lake's figures come from
Elkhart Lake's 28th-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 Elkhart Lake's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.