Pendleton, IN
How exposed is Pendleton to wildfire?
Pendleton's 2,719 buildings earn a 5th-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 Pendleton at the 5th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 76.5% of Pendleton's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 23.5% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Pendleton compares
Compare Pendleton's two percentiles: 38th within Indiana, only 5th nationally — a gap of 32 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pendleton ranks 29,843 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,896 by building count (1 is largest). Within Indiana alone, it ranks 605 of 967 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Indiana on its state page.
Pendleton and the insurance market
Pendleton's low wildfire rating (5th 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 Pendleton
With 76.5% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Pendleton 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Pendleton's 29,843-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Pendleton, see the exposure-zones guide.