Elmo, MT
How exposed is Elmo to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Elmo at the 84th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 132 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Elmo at the 84th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
132 buildings are counted in Elmo, and 53.8% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0.8% rated Minimal.
How Elmo compares
Inside Montana, Elmo sits at just the 60th percentile even though it scores 84th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Elmo ranks 5,140 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 27,629 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 190 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Elmo
Elmo's 84th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 53.8% of Elmo in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Elmo's 84th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Elmo, see the exposure-zones guide.