Pocatello, ID
How exposed is Pocatello to wildfire?
USFS scores Pocatello at the 98th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 20,912 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Pocatello at the 98th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Pocatello's buildings actually sit
20,912 buildings are counted in Pocatello, and 52.8% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 11% in Direct exposure or the 36.3% rated Minimal. At 20,912 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Pocatello against the rest of the country
Pocatello's risk sits at a similar level relative to Idaho (93rd percentile statewide) as it does nationally (98th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pocatello ranks 508 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 669 by building count (1 is largest). Within Idaho alone, it ranks 17 of 232 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Idaho on its state page.
Pocatello and the insurance market
Pocatello's 98th-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
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Pocatello (52.8% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 20,912 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Pocatello. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Pocatello, see the exposure-zones guide.