Great Falls, MT
Great Falls, MT's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Great Falls sits at the 51st percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 28,485 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Great Falls's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 50th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 1.7% of Great Falls's 28,485 buildings carry Direct exposure and 9.2% carry Indirect; the remaining 89.1% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 28,485 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Great Falls against the rest of the country
Great Falls's 51st national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 14th ranking inside Montana does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 37 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Great Falls ranks 15,473 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 421 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 407 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Great Falls
Great Falls's elevated wildfire rating (51st percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Hardening a home in Great Falls
Even with 89.1% of Great Falls 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.
More on how this number was built
Great Falls's 51st-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Great Falls, see the exposure-zones guide.