South Whitley, IN
South Whitley wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, South Whitley lands at the 4th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 1,005 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts South Whitley at the 4th percentile, close to its 4th-percentile risk score.
Where South Whitley's buildings actually sit
88.3% of South Whitley's 1,005 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 11.7% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
How South Whitley compares
Compare South Whitley's two percentiles: 27th within Indiana, only 4th nationally — a gap of 24 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, South Whitley ranks 30,354 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,894 by building count (1 is largest). Within Indiana alone, it ranks 711 of 967 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Indiana on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 4th national percentile, South Whitley rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
South Whitley's 88.3% 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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind South Whitley's 30,354-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond South Whitley, see the exposure-zones guide.