Lame Deer, MT
How exposed is Lame Deer to wildfire?
USFS scores Lame Deer at the 98th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 923 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Lame Deer's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 98th percentile nationally.
Where Lame Deer's buildings actually sit
Of Lame Deer's 923 counted buildings, 62.4% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Lame Deer against the rest of the country
Lame Deer's risk sits at a similar level relative to Montana (96th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (98th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lame Deer ranks 791 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,530 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 19 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Lame Deer's very high rating (98th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Hardening a home in Lame Deer
Because Direct exposure dominates in Lame Deer (62.4%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Lame Deer's 98th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Lame Deer, see the exposure-zones guide.