Lavina, MT
How exposed is Lavina to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Lavina at the 70th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 170 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lavina at the 67th national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Lavina's building exposure, zone by zone
72.4% of Lavina's 170 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 27.7% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
Where Lavina ranks
Lavina's 70th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 39th ranking inside Montana does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 31 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lavina ranks 9,390 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 26,033 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 289 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Lavina
Lavina's 70th-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Hardening a home in Lavina
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Lavina (72.4% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 170 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Lavina. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Lavina, see the exposure-zones guide.