Four Lakes, WA
Four Lakes wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Four Lakes at the 81st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 387 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Four Lakes at the 81st percentile, close to its 81st-percentile risk score.
Four Lakes's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 51.4% of Four Lakes's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 35.4% Indirect share and far above its 13.2% Minimal share — a profile where 199 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
How Four Lakes compares
Four Lakes scores 81st nationally and 75th within Washington — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Four Lakes ranks 6,099 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 19,479 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 160 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Four Lakes's 81st-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.
Hardening a home in Four Lakes
Because Direct exposure dominates in Four Lakes (51.4%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Four Lakes's 6,099-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Four Lakes, see the exposure-zones guide.