Payneway, AR
Payneway, AR's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Payneway sits at the 39th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 195 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Payneway at the 35th national percentile — 5 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Payneway rates 58.5% Minimal exposure against just 35.9% Direct and 5.6% Indirect — of 195 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
How Payneway compares
Payneway's 39th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 18th ranking inside Arkansas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 21 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Payneway ranks 19,151 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,019 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arkansas alone, it ranks 503 of 614 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arkansas on its state page.
Payneway and the insurance market
Payneway's moderate rating (39th 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
With 58.5% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Payneway gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Payneway's 39th-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 Payneway, see the exposure-zones guide.