Spencer, NE
Spencer, NE's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Spencer at the 74th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 409 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Spencer at the 69th national percentile — 6 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Spencer's buildings actually sit
Most of Spencer's buildings (81.9%) 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.
How Spencer compares
Spencer's risk sits at a similar level relative to Nebraska (76th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (74th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Spencer ranks 8,103 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 19,053 by building count (1 is largest). Within Nebraska alone, it ranks 141 of 583 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Nebraska on its state page.
Spencer and the insurance market
Spencer's 74th-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
Spencer's 81.9% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Spencer's 74th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Spencer, see the exposure-zones guide.