Lincoln, NE
How exposed is Lincoln to wildfire?
Lincoln sits at the 76th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 104,113 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Lincoln at the 70th percentile, close to its 76th-percentile risk score.
Where Lincoln's buildings actually sit
Only 3.6% of Lincoln's 104,113 buildings carry Direct exposure and 6.2% carry Indirect; the remaining 90.2% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 104,113 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Lincoln compares
There's little gap between Lincoln's 76th national percentile and its 79th percentile inside Nebraska, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lincoln ranks 7,662 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 58 by building count (1 is largest). Within Nebraska alone, it ranks 124 of 583 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Nebraska on its state page.
Lincoln and the insurance market
At the 76th percentile nationally, Lincoln carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
Hardening a home in Lincoln
Even with 90.2% of Lincoln 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.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 104,113 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Lincoln. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Lincoln, see the exposure-zones guide.