Howland Center, OH
How exposed is Howland Center to wildfire?
USFS scores Howland Center at the 31st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 3,242 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Howland Center at the 32nd percentile, close to its 31st-percentile risk score.
Where Howland Center's buildings actually sit
Most of Howland Center's buildings (47.1%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Where Howland Center ranks
Compare Howland Center's two percentiles: 68th within Ohio, only 31st nationally — a gap of 37 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Howland Center ranks 21,662 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,114 by building count (1 is largest). Within Ohio alone, it ranks 401 of 1,264 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Ohio on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Howland Center
Howland Center's moderate wildfire rating (31st 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Howland Center's 47.1% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Howland Center's 31st-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Howland Center, see the exposure-zones guide.