Olney, MT
Olney, MT's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Olney at the 95th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 149 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Olney's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 97th percentile nationally.
Olney's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Olney: 94% of its 149 buildings, versus 6% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
How Olney compares
There's little gap between Olney's 95th national percentile and its 89th percentile inside Montana, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Olney ranks 1,576 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 26,919 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 55 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Olney and the insurance market
Olney's 95th-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.
Hardening a home in Olney
Because Direct exposure dominates in Olney (94%), 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
Olney's 95th-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 Olney, see the exposure-zones guide.