Pawnee City, NE
Pawnee City, NE's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Pawnee City lands at the 82nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 760 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Pawnee City's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 76th percentile nationally.
Where Pawnee City's buildings actually sit
Most of Pawnee City's buildings (77%) 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.
Pawnee City against the rest of the country
Pawnee City's risk sits at a similar level relative to Nebraska (90th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (82nd) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pawnee City ranks 5,770 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 14,017 by building count (1 is largest). Within Nebraska alone, it ranks 62 of 583 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Nebraska on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Pawnee City's 82nd-percentile, very 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 77% of Pawnee City'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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Pawnee City's 5,770-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Pawnee City, see the exposure-zones guide.