Plain Dealing, LA
How exposed is Plain Dealing to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Plain Dealing lands at the 62nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 565 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 Plain Dealing at the 63rd percentile, close to its 62nd-percentile risk score.
Plain Dealing's building exposure, zone by zone
51.5% of Plain Dealing's 565 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 48.5% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
Where Plain Dealing ranks
Compare Plain Dealing's two percentiles: 78th within Louisiana, only 62nd nationally — a gap of 16 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Plain Dealing ranks 12,003 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 16,322 by building count (1 is largest). Within Louisiana alone, it ranks 110 of 488 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Louisiana on its state page.
Plain Dealing and the insurance market
Plain Dealing's 62nd-percentile, 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.
Hardening a home in Plain Dealing
Because 51.5% of Plain Dealing'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 Plain Dealing's figures come from
Plain Dealing's 62nd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Plain Dealing's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.