Monarch, MT
How exposed is Monarch to wildfire?
USFS scores Monarch at the 91st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 83 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Monarch's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 86th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Monarch's 83 counted buildings, 97.6% 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.
Monarch against the rest of the country
Monarch scores 91st nationally and 80th within Montana — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Monarch ranks 2,774 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,768 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 97 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
Monarch's 91st-percentile, very 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because Direct exposure dominates in Monarch (97.6%), 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
Monarch's 91st-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 Monarch, see the exposure-zones guide.