Grand Rapids, MI
Grand Rapids, MI's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Grand Rapids's 71,817 buildings earn a 14th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places 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 Grand Rapids at the 15th percentile, close to its 14th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Grand Rapids rates 93.6% Minimal exposure against just 2.6% Direct and 3.9% Indirect — of 71,817 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 71,817 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Grand Rapids ranks
Grand Rapids's 47th-percentile standing inside Michigan outpaces its 14th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Grand Rapids ranks 27,232 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 108 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 394 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
Grand Rapids and the insurance market
Grand Rapids's low rating (14th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
With 93.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Grand Rapids gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Grand Rapids's figures come from
Grand Rapids's 14th-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 Grand Rapids's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.