Palisade, NE
How exposed is Palisade to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Palisade at the 64th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 335 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Palisade's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 61st percentile nationally.
Palisade's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Palisade's buildings (86.9%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
How Palisade compares
Palisade's risk sits at a similar level relative to Nebraska (56th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (64th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Palisade ranks 11,445 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 20,702 by building count (1 is largest). Within Nebraska alone, it ranks 257 of 583 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Nebraska on its state page.
Palisade and the insurance market
Palisade's 64th-percentile, 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 Palisade
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Palisade (86.9% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Palisade's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 335 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Palisade. The exposure-zones guide covers what Palisade's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.