Portage, WI
Portage wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Portage at the 43rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 4,139 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Portage at the 45th national percentile — 1 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
USFS puts 77.4% of Portage's 4,139 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 12.3% Direct and 10.4% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Portage compares
Portage's 94th-percentile standing inside Wisconsin outpaces its 43rd national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Portage ranks 17,951 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,110 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 49 of 808 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Wisconsin on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Portage
Portage's elevated wildfire rating (43rd 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 ember exposure the dominant pattern in Portage (77.4% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Portage's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 4,139 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Portage. The exposure-zones guide covers what Portage's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.