Meridian Hills, IN
Meridian Hills, IN's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Meridian Hills lands at the 9th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 800 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Meridian Hills at the 10th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Meridian Hills's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 56.3% of Meridian Hills's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 43.8% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Where Meridian Hills ranks
Meridian Hills's 54th-percentile standing inside Indiana outpaces its 9th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Meridian Hills ranks 28,582 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,630 by building count (1 is largest). Within Indiana alone, it ranks 448 of 967 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Indiana on its state page.
Meridian Hills and the insurance market
At the 9th national percentile, Meridian Hills rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 56.3% of Meridian Hills 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Meridian Hills's 28,582-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Meridian Hills, see the exposure-zones guide.