Emerald, NE
Emerald, NE's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Emerald lands at the 75th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 78 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Emerald at the 66th percentile, close to its 75th-percentile risk score.
Where Emerald's buildings actually sit
Most of Emerald's buildings (66.7% of 78) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure.
How Emerald compares
Emerald's risk sits at a similar level relative to Nebraska (77th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (75th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Emerald ranks 8,007 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,973 by building count (1 is largest). Within Nebraska alone, it ranks 137 of 583 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Nebraska on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Emerald
Emerald's 75th-percentile, 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
With 66.7% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Emerald gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Emerald's 8,007-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Emerald, see the exposure-zones guide.