Prairie Heights, WA
Prairie Heights wildfire risk explained
Prairie Heights 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 2,125 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 Prairie Heights at the 31st percentile, close to its 28th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 69.8% of Prairie Heights's 2,125 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 29.7% Direct and 0.4% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Prairie Heights compares
Prairie Heights's 47th-percentile standing inside Washington outpaces its 28th 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, Prairie Heights ranks 22,673 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,133 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 335 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Prairie Heights'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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 69.8% of Prairie Heights's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Prairie Heights's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 2,125 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Prairie Heights. The exposure-zones guide covers what Prairie Heights's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.