Palestine, OH
How exposed is Palestine to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Palestine at the 3rd national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 164 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Palestine at the 3rd percentile, close to its 3rd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
79.3% of Palestine's 164 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 20.7% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
How Palestine compares
Palestine scores 3rd nationally and 17th within Ohio — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Palestine ranks 30,682 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 26,264 by building count (1 is largest). Within Ohio alone, it ranks 1,057 of 1,264 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Ohio on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Palestine's low rating (3rd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 79.3% of Palestine 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
Palestine's 3rd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Palestine, see the exposure-zones guide.