Nelchina, AK
How exposed is Nelchina to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Nelchina lands at the 95th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 44 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Nelchina at the 93rd percentile, close to its 95th-percentile risk score.
Nelchina's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Nelchina: 100% of its 44 buildings, versus 0% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
How Nelchina compares
There's little gap between Nelchina's 95th national percentile and its 85th percentile inside Alaska, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Nelchina ranks 1,625 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 31,066 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alaska alone, it ranks 50 of 322 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alaska on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 95th percentile nationally, Nelchina carries the very 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 Nelchina
Because Direct exposure dominates in Nelchina (100%), 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Nelchina's 1,625-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Nelchina, see the exposure-zones guide.