South Bend, IN
How exposed is South Bend to wildfire?
USFS scores South Bend at the 7th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 47,258 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, South Bend's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 8th percentile nationally.
Where South Bend's buildings actually sit
South Bend rates 95.5% Minimal exposure against just 3.1% Direct and 1.5% Indirect — of 47,258 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 47,258 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where South Bend ranks
Compare South Bend's two percentiles: 47th within Indiana, only 7th nationally — a gap of 40 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, South Bend ranks 29,214 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 190 by building count (1 is largest). Within Indiana alone, it ranks 515 of 967 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Indiana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in South Bend
South Bend's low rating (7th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in South Bend
South Bend's 95.5% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where South Bend's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind South Bend's 29,214-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what South Bend's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.