Joplin, MT
Joplin wildfire risk explained
Joplin's 215 buildings earn a 11th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Joplin at the 8th percentile, close to its 11th-percentile risk score.
Where Joplin's buildings actually sit
Only 22.8% of Joplin's 215 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 77.2% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Joplin against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Joplin's 11th national percentile and its 2nd percentile inside Montana, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Joplin ranks 28,116 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,313 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 465 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Joplin
Joplin's low wildfire rating (11th 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
With 77.2% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Joplin gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Joplin's 28,116-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Joplin, see the exposure-zones guide.