Lake City, FL
How exposed is Lake City to wildfire?
Lake City's 5,269 buildings earn a 73rd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Lake City at the 74th percentile, close to its 73rd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Lake City's buildings (69.5%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone. At 5,269 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Lake City compares
Lake City ranks lower within Florida (33rd percentile statewide) than its 73rd national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lake City ranks 8,408 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,275 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 640 of 955 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Florida on its state page.
Lake City and the insurance market
At the 73rd percentile nationally, Lake City carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
What would actually reduce this score
Lake City's 69.5% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lake City's 8,408-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Lake City, see the exposure-zones guide.