Lester Prairie, MN
How exposed is Lester Prairie to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Lester Prairie at the 24th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 856 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Lester Prairie at the 22nd percentile, close to its 24th-percentile risk score.
Lester Prairie's building exposure, zone by zone
Lester Prairie rates 85.1% Minimal exposure against just 15% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 856 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Lester Prairie against the rest of the country
Lester Prairie's risk sits at a similar level relative to Minnesota (28th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (24th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lester Prairie ranks 23,921 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,120 by building count (1 is largest). Within Minnesota alone, it ranks 655 of 914 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Minnesota on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Lester Prairie
Lester Prairie's moderate wildfire rating (24th 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
Even with 85.1% of Lester Prairie outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Lester Prairie's figures come from
Lester Prairie's 24th-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 Lester Prairie's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.