Portage, MI
Portage, MI's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Portage at the 10th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 18,992 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Portage at the 11th percentile, close to its 10th-percentile risk score.
Where Portage's buildings actually sit
Most of Portage's buildings (46.6% of 18,992) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 18,992 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Portage against the rest of the country
Within Michigan, Portage ranks higher (34th percentile) than it does nationally (10th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Portage ranks 28,400 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 747 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 495 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Portage
Portage's low wildfire rating (10th 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
Portage's 46.6% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Portage's 10th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Portage, see the exposure-zones guide.