Poplar, WI
How exposed is Poplar to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Poplar lands at the 37th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 618 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Poplar at the 39th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
618 buildings are counted in Poplar, and 95.3% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
How Poplar compares
Within Wisconsin, Poplar ranks higher (88th percentile) than it does nationally (37th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Poplar ranks 19,748 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,599 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 100 of 808 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Wisconsin on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Poplar's moderate wildfire rating (37th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 95.3% of Poplar in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Poplar's 19,748-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Poplar, see the exposure-zones guide.