Frenchtown, MT
Frenchtown, MT's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Frenchtown's 1,290 buildings earn a 86th-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 Frenchtown at the 84th percentile, close to its 86th-percentile risk score.
Frenchtown's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 79.2% of Frenchtown's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 20.8% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 1,022 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
Where Frenchtown ranks
Inside Montana, Frenchtown sits at just the 65th percentile even though it scores 86th 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, Frenchtown ranks 4,378 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,122 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 165 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Frenchtown and the insurance market
Frenchtown's 86th-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 Frenchtown
Frenchtown's 79.2% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,290 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Frenchtown. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Frenchtown, see the exposure-zones guide.