Lake City, MI
Lake City, MI's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Lake City's 655 buildings earn a 26th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lake City at the 26th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
78.9% of Lake City's 655 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 9.5% Direct and 11.6% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
How Lake City compares
Within Michigan, Lake City ranks higher (77th percentile) than it does nationally (26th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lake City ranks 23,235 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,131 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 170 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 26th national percentile, Lake City rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Lake City
Because 78.9% of Lake City's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lake City's 23,235-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.