Painted Hills, IN
Painted Hills wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Painted Hills at the 23rd national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 389 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Painted Hills's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 25th percentile nationally.
Painted Hills's building exposure, zone by zone
96.4% of Painted Hills's 389 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 375 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 1.8% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 1.8% are Minimal.
Painted Hills against the rest of the country
Compare Painted Hills's two percentiles: 88th within Indiana, only 23rd nationally — a gap of 65 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Painted Hills ranks 24,260 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 19,425 by building count (1 is largest). Within Indiana alone, it ranks 113 of 967 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Indiana on its state page.
Painted Hills and the insurance market
Painted Hills's moderate wildfire rating (23rd percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Hardening a home in Painted Hills
Because Direct exposure dominates in Painted Hills (96.4%), 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 Painted Hills's 24,260-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Painted Hills, see the exposure-zones guide.