Kittitas, WA
Kittitas, WA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Kittitas at the 97th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 716 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Kittitas at the 99th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
67.9% of Kittitas's 716 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 32% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
How Kittitas compares
Kittitas scores 97th nationally and 93rd within Washington — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Kittitas ranks 961 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 14,510 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 45 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Kittitas's 97th-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 Kittitas
Kittitas's 67.9% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 716 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Kittitas. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Kittitas, see the exposure-zones guide.