Helena, OH
Helena wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Helena at the 2nd national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 199 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Helena at the 2nd percentile, close to its 2nd-percentile risk score.
Helena's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 6% of Helena's 199 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 94% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
How Helena compares
There's little gap between Helena's 2nd national percentile and its 13th percentile inside Ohio, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Helena ranks 30,903 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,899 by building count (1 is largest). Within Ohio alone, it ranks 1,100 of 1,264 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Ohio on its state page.
Helena and the insurance market
Helena's low wildfire rating (2nd 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 94% of Helena 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.
Where Helena's figures come from
Helena's 2nd-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 Helena's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.