Portal, ND
Portal, ND's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Portal sits at the 28th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 175 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Portal at the 25th percentile, close to its 28th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Portal rates 83.4% Minimal exposure against just 16.6% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 175 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
How Portal compares
Portal's 28th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 11th ranking inside North Dakota does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 17 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Portal ranks 22,858 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,830 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Dakota alone, it ranks 360 of 402 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Dakota on its state page.
Portal and the insurance market
Portal's moderate wildfire rating (28th 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.
Hardening a home in Portal
With 83.4% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Portal gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Portal's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 175 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Portal. The exposure-zones guide covers what Portal's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.