Ottawa, OH
How exposed is Ottawa to wildfire?
USFS scores Ottawa at the 1st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 2,481 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Ottawa at the 1st percentile, close to its 1st-percentile risk score.
Where Ottawa's buildings actually sit
Most of Ottawa's buildings (92.3% of 2,481) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure.
Ottawa against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Ottawa's 1st national percentile and its 7th percentile inside Ohio, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ottawa ranks 31,183 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,333 by building count (1 is largest). Within Ohio alone, it ranks 1,184 of 1,264 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Ohio on its state page.
Ottawa and the insurance market
At the 1st national percentile, Ottawa rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Ottawa
Even with 92.3% of Ottawa 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.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 2,481 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Ottawa. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Ottawa, see the exposure-zones guide.