Keaau, HI
Keaau, HI's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Keaau at the 85th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 1,015 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Keaau's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 82nd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Keaau's 1,015 counted buildings, 50.2% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Where Keaau ranks
Inside Hawaii, Keaau sits at just the 18th percentile even though it scores 85th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Keaau ranks 4,726 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,836 by building count (1 is largest). Within Hawaii alone, it ranks 134 of 163 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Hawaii on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Keaau
Keaau's 85th-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.
Hardening a home in Keaau
Keaau's 50.2% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Keaau's 4,726-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Keaau, see the exposure-zones guide.