St. Marie, MT
St. Marie wildfire risk explained
St. Marie's 623 buildings earn a 80th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, St. Marie's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 80th percentile nationally.
St. Marie's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 67.9% of St. Marie's 623 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 32.1% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where St. Marie ranks
St. Marie's 80th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 53rd ranking inside Montana does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 27 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, St. Marie ranks 6,371 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,518 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 226 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
St. Marie and the insurance market
St. Marie's high rating (80th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Hardening a home in St. Marie
Because 67.9% of St. Marie's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind St. Marie's 6,371-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond St. Marie, see the exposure-zones guide.