Portage, OH
How exposed is Portage to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Portage at the 2nd national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 291 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 2nd percentile, close to its 2nd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 14.1% of Portage's 291 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 85.9% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Portage against the rest of the country
Portage scores 2nd nationally and 11th within Ohio — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Portage ranks 30,966 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,886 by building count (1 is largest). Within Ohio alone, it ranks 1,117 of 1,264 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Ohio on its state page.
Portage and the insurance market
At the 2nd national percentile, Portage rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
With 85.9% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Portage gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Portage's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Portage's 30,966-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Portage's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.