Skagway, AK
How exposed is Skagway to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Skagway at the 16th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 771 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Skagway at the 16th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Skagway's buildings actually sit
Most of Skagway's buildings (82.1%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Where Skagway ranks
There's little gap between Skagway's 16th national percentile and its 20th percentile inside Alaska, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Skagway ranks 26,494 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,905 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alaska alone, it ranks 259 of 322 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alaska on its state page.
Skagway and the insurance market
Skagway's low rating (16th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Skagway (82.1% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Skagway's 26,494-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Skagway, see the exposure-zones guide.