Fertile, MN
Fertile wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Fertile at the 72nd national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 666 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Fertile at the 73rd percentile, close to its 72nd-percentile risk score.
Where Fertile's buildings actually sit
Most of Fertile's buildings (71.3%) 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.
How Fertile compares
Compare Fertile's two percentiles: 95th within Minnesota, only 72nd nationally — a gap of 23 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Fertile ranks 8,789 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,001 by building count (1 is largest). Within Minnesota alone, it ranks 46 of 914 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Minnesota on its state page.
Fertile and the insurance market
Fertile's high rating (72nd percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Fertile's 71.3% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
Where Fertile's figures come from
Fertile's 72nd-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 Fertile's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.