St. Johns, MI
How exposed is St. Johns to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, St. Johns lands at the 4th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 3,514 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks St. Johns at the 4th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 93.8% of St. Johns's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 6.2% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
St. Johns against the rest of the country
There's little gap between St. Johns's 4th national percentile and its 8th percentile inside Michigan, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, St. Johns ranks 30,296 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,756 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 684 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
St. Johns and the insurance market
St. Johns's low rating (4th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 93.8% of St. Johns 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
St. Johns's 4th-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 St. Johns, see the exposure-zones guide.