St. Maries, ID
St. Maries wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, St. Maries lands at the 70th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 1,363 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, St. Maries's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 64th percentile nationally.
St. Maries's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 90.5% of St. Maries's 1,363 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 9.5% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where St. Maries ranks
St. Maries's 70th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 37th ranking inside Idaho does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 33 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, St. Maries ranks 9,483 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,772 by building count (1 is largest). Within Idaho alone, it ranks 146 of 232 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Idaho on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in St. Maries
St. Maries's 70th-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.
Hardening a home in St. Maries
Because 90.5% of St. Maries'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. Maries's 9,483-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. Maries, see the exposure-zones guide.