Polk, NE
Polk wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Polk at the 6th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 308 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Polk's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 5th percentile nationally.
Polk's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 8.1% of Polk's 308 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 91.9% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
How Polk compares
There's little gap between Polk's 6th national percentile and its 3rd percentile inside Nebraska, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Polk ranks 29,696 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,423 by building count (1 is largest). Within Nebraska alone, it ranks 567 of 583 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Nebraska on its state page.
Polk and the insurance market
Polk's low wildfire rating (6th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 91.9% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Polk 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 308 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Polk. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Polk, see the exposure-zones guide.