Rochester Hills, MI
How exposed is Rochester Hills to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Rochester Hills at the 9th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 26,130 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 Rochester Hills at the 10th percentile, close to its 9th-percentile risk score.
Rochester Hills's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Rochester Hills's buildings (76.5% of 26,130) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 26,130 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Rochester Hills against the rest of the country
Within Michigan, Rochester Hills ranks higher (26th percentile) than it does nationally (9th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Rochester Hills ranks 28,844 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 474 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 551 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Rochester Hills's low wildfire rating (9th 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 Rochester Hills
Even with 76.5% of Rochester Hills outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Rochester Hills's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Rochester Hills's 28,844-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Rochester Hills's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.