Mount Pleasant, MI
How exposed is Mount Pleasant to wildfire?
USFS scores Mount Pleasant at the 5th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 5,791 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Mount Pleasant's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 6th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
97.6% of Mount Pleasant's 5,791 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 2.4% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 5,791 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Mount Pleasant against the rest of the country
Mount Pleasant scores 5th nationally and 13th within Michigan — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mount Pleasant ranks 29,883 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,986 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 651 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
Mount Pleasant and the insurance market
Mount Pleasant's low wildfire rating (5th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 97.6% of Mount Pleasant 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 Mount Pleasant's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 5,791 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Mount Pleasant. The exposure-zones guide covers what Mount Pleasant's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.