Southfield, MI
How exposed is Southfield to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Southfield at the 7th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 22,915 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Southfield at the 8th percentile, close to its 7th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Southfield's buildings (87.2% of 22,915) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 22,915 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Southfield compares
Southfield scores 7th nationally and 21st within Michigan — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Southfield ranks 29,285 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 577 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 591 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
Southfield and the insurance market
Southfield'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.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 87.2% of Southfield 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.
More on how this number was built
Southfield's 7th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Southfield, see the exposure-zones guide.