Okemah, OK
Okemah, OK's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Okemah lands at the 98th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 1,842 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 Okemah at the 99th percentile, close to its 98th-percentile risk score.
Okemah's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Okemah's buildings (71.5%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
How Okemah compares
Okemah scores 98th nationally and 97th within Oklahoma — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Okemah ranks 638 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,944 by building count (1 is largest). Within Oklahoma alone, it ranks 23 of 834 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Oklahoma on its state page.
Okemah and the insurance market
Okemah's 98th-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
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Okemah (71.5% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Okemah's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Okemah's 638-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Okemah's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.