How WildfireRiskFinder Calculates Wildfire Risk

Two separate USFS numbers, not one

Every community page reports two genuinely different scores: a risk percentile — USFS's Risk to Potential Structures (RPS), which combines fire likelihood, intensity and what's actually built there — and a burn-probability percentile, the annual fire likelihood alone, independent of buildings. Venice, LA shows how far apart these two can run for the same place: its risk and burn-probability percentiles differ by 16 points.

Both are percentiles, not raw scores

USFS publishes these as 0-1 national percentile ranks already — this site reports them as-is, never re-normalized, so "100th percentile" always means the same thing it means in USFS's own tables.

The rating bands are ours, not USFS's

USFS does not publish a categorical Low/Moderate/Elevated/High/Very High label for these percentiles — this site's five-band system is our own bucketing of the raw number, always shown next to the percentile itself so the label is traceable to the figure it came from, not standing in for it.

Building exposure, at the structure level

Separately, USFS classifies every building into one of three mutually exclusive exposure zones: Direct (in or adjacent to burnable vegetation), Indirect (ember exposure from nearby vegetation), or Minimal (neither). The exposure-zones guide covers what each means with real examples.

Where the raw numbers come from

All figures come from the USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset (RDS-2024-0030, workbook updated 2026-04-15), aggregated to the Census Place ("community") level for the 31,521 pages on this site and to the county level for the state pages. The dataset "can be used without additional permissions or fees" per USFS's own publication terms. Every source is cited on the page it feeds.

Where to go next

See the range this plays out across: Anza, CA, Sunshine, NM, Haviland, OH.

Why 517 US Places Have No Wildfire Score on This Site · Direct, Indirect and Minimal Wildfire Exposure, Explained