Pentwater, MI
How exposed is Pentwater to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Pentwater lands at the 30th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 1,057 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Pentwater at the 29th percentile, close to its 30th-percentile risk score.
Pentwater's building exposure, zone by zone
Indirect exposure is dominant in Pentwater (70.6% of 1,057 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 27.3% sit in the Direct zone.
Where Pentwater ranks
Compare Pentwater's two percentiles: 82nd within Michigan, only 30th nationally — a gap of 52 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pentwater ranks 22,060 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,546 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 132 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Pentwater
Pentwater's moderate wildfire rating (30th 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 Pentwater
Because 70.6% of Pentwater'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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,057 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Pentwater. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Pentwater, see the exposure-zones guide.