Parchment, MI
Parchment wildfire risk explained
Parchment's 869 buildings earn a 11th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Parchment at the 12th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Parchment's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 89.3% of Parchment's 869 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 9.4% Direct and 1.3% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Parchment compares
Within Michigan, Parchment ranks higher (39th percentile) than it does nationally (11th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Parchment ranks 27,988 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,996 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 459 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
Parchment and the insurance market
Parchment's low wildfire rating (11th 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 Parchment
Because 89.3% of Parchment's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Parchment's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Parchment's 27,988-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Parchment's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.