Fort Smith, AR
Fort Smith wildfire risk explained
Fort Smith's 37,939 buildings earn a 84th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Fort Smith at the 87th percentile, close to its 84th-percentile risk score.
Fort Smith's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 71.5% of Fort Smith's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 14.1% Direct and 14.4% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 37,939 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Fort Smith against the rest of the country
Fort Smith's risk sits at a similar level relative to Arkansas (91st percentile statewide) as it does nationally (84th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Fort Smith ranks 5,033 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 268 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arkansas alone, it ranks 59 of 614 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arkansas on its state page.
Fort Smith and the insurance market
Fort Smith's very high rating (84th 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.
Hardening a home in Fort Smith
Even with 71.5% of Fort Smith outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Fort Smith's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 37,939 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Fort Smith. The exposure-zones guide covers what Fort Smith's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.