Scottsbluff, NE
How exposed is Scottsbluff to wildfire?
USFS scores Scottsbluff at the 57th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 7,623 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 Scottsbluff at the 57th percentile, close to its 57th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 82.1% of Scottsbluff's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 3.7% Direct and 14.2% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 7,623 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Scottsbluff ranks
There's little gap between Scottsbluff's 57th national percentile and its 45th percentile inside Nebraska, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Scottsbluff ranks 13,656 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,241 by building count (1 is largest). Within Nebraska alone, it ranks 323 of 583 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Nebraska on its state page.
Scottsbluff and the insurance market
Scottsbluff's elevated wildfire rating (57th 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
Even with 82.1% of Scottsbluff 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 Scottsbluff's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Scottsbluff's 13,656-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Scottsbluff's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.