Lafayette, IN
Lafayette wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Lafayette at the 9th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 28,519 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Lafayette's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 10th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Lafayette's buildings (94.5% of 28,519) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 28,519 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Lafayette compares
Within Indiana, Lafayette ranks higher (54th percentile) than it does nationally (9th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lafayette ranks 28,581 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 417 by building count (1 is largest). Within Indiana alone, it ranks 447 of 967 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Indiana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Lafayette
Lafayette's low rating (9th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Lafayette
Even with 94.5% of Lafayette outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lafayette's 28,581-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Lafayette, see the exposure-zones guide.