Elmer City, WA
Elmer City wildfire risk explained
Elmer City sits at the 97th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 196 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Elmer City's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 98th percentile nationally.
Elmer City's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Elmer City's buildings (88.3%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Elmer City against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Elmer City's 97th national percentile and its 92nd percentile inside Washington, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Elmer City ranks 1,024 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,015 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 51 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Elmer City
Elmer City's 97th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 88.3% of Elmer City's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 196 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Elmer City. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Elmer City, see the exposure-zones guide.