Lake Stevens, WA
Lake Stevens, WA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Lake Stevens lands at the 12th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 13,842 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lake Stevens at the 13th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Lake Stevens's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 13.5% of Lake Stevens's 13,842 buildings carry Direct exposure and 41.5% carry Indirect; the remaining 45% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 13,842 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 Stevens compares
There's little gap between Lake Stevens's 12th national percentile and its 14th percentile inside Washington, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lake Stevens ranks 27,719 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,095 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 540 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
Lake Stevens and the insurance market
Lake Stevens's low wildfire rating (12th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 45% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Lake Stevens gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Lake Stevens's figures come from
Lake Stevens's 12th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Lake Stevens's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.