Grand Forks, ND
How exposed is Grand Forks to wildfire?
Grand Forks's 17,738 buildings earn a 47th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Grand Forks at the 49th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Grand Forks's building exposure, zone by zone
95.2% of Grand Forks's 17,738 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 4.5% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 17,738 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Grand Forks compares
Grand Forks scores 47th nationally and 45th within North Dakota — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Grand Forks ranks 16,585 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 807 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Dakota alone, it ranks 221 of 402 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Dakota on its state page.
Grand Forks and the insurance market
At the 47th national percentile, Grand Forks rates elevated for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
Grand Forks's 95.2% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Grand Forks's 16,585-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Grand Forks, see the exposure-zones guide.