Kawela Bay, HI
Kawela Bay wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Kawela Bay lands at the 90th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 208 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Kawela Bay at the 87th percentile, close to its 90th-percentile risk score.
Kawela Bay's building exposure, zone by zone
Indirect exposure is dominant in Kawela Bay (84.6% of 208 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 8.7% sit in the Direct zone.
How Kawela Bay compares
Kawela Bay's 90th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 45th ranking inside Hawaii does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 45 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Kawela Bay ranks 3,183 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,544 by building count (1 is largest). Within Hawaii alone, it ranks 90 of 163 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Hawaii on its state page.
Kawela Bay and the insurance market
Kawela Bay's 90th-percentile, very 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
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Kawela Bay (84.6% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Kawela Bay's 3,183-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Kawela Bay, see the exposure-zones guide.