Smelterville, ID
How exposed is Smelterville to wildfire?
USFS scores Smelterville at the 72nd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 471 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Smelterville's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 64th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Indirect exposure is dominant in Smelterville (96.4% of 471 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 3.6% sit in the Direct zone.
How Smelterville compares
Smelterville's 72nd national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 39th ranking inside Idaho does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 33 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Smelterville ranks 8,695 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 17,852 by building count (1 is largest). Within Idaho alone, it ranks 142 of 232 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Idaho on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Smelterville
Smelterville's 72nd-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Smelterville (96.4% 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 Smelterville's 8,695-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Smelterville, see the exposure-zones guide.