Heber Springs, AR
How exposed is Heber Springs to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Heber Springs lands at the 71st percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 4,185 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Heber Springs's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 75th percentile nationally.
Where Heber Springs's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 61.1% of Heber Springs's 4,185 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 38.6% Direct and 0.4% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Heber Springs compares
Heber Springs's risk sits at a similar level relative to Arkansas (58th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (71st) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Heber Springs ranks 9,003 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,069 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arkansas alone, it ranks 259 of 614 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arkansas on its state page.
Heber Springs and the insurance market
Heber Springs's 71st-percentile, 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 61.1% of Heber Springs's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 4,185 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Heber Springs. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Heber Springs, see the exposure-zones guide.