Ponderosa Pines, MT
Ponderosa Pines wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Ponderosa Pines at the 84th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 476 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Ponderosa Pines at the 78th national percentile — 5 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Ponderosa Pines's buildings actually sit
Direct exposure dominates in Ponderosa Pines: 99.8% of its 476 buildings, versus 0.2% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Ponderosa Pines ranks
Ponderosa Pines ranks lower within Montana (61st percentile statewide) than its 84th national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ponderosa Pines ranks 5,112 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 17,786 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 189 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Ponderosa Pines and the insurance market
Ponderosa Pines's very high rating (84th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Ponderosa Pines's 99.8% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Ponderosa Pines's 5,112-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Ponderosa Pines, see the exposure-zones guide.