Prairie Creek, IN
Prairie Creek wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Prairie Creek at the 8th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 139 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Prairie Creek at the 8th percentile, close to its 8th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
66.9% of Prairie Creek's 139 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 93 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 0% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 33.1% are Minimal.
Where Prairie Creek ranks
Compare Prairie Creek's two percentiles: 48th within Indiana, only 8th nationally — a gap of 40 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Prairie Creek ranks 29,147 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 27,321 by building count (1 is largest). Within Indiana alone, it ranks 507 of 967 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Indiana on its state page.
Prairie Creek and the insurance market
Prairie Creek's low rating (8th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Prairie Creek
Prairie Creek's 66.9% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Prairie Creek's 29,147-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Prairie Creek, see the exposure-zones guide.