Oroville, WA
Oroville wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Oroville lands at the 96th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 1,107 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Oroville at the 97th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Oroville's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 85.2% of Oroville's 1,107 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 14.5% Direct and 0.3% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Oroville ranks
Oroville scores 96th nationally and 90th within Washington — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Oroville ranks 1,182 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,240 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 62 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
Oroville and the insurance market
Oroville's 96th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Oroville (85.2% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,107 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Oroville. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Oroville, see the exposure-zones guide.