Stanford, MT
How exposed is Stanford to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Stanford lands at the 44th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 470 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Stanford at the 42nd national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 91.5% of Stanford's 470 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 8.5% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Stanford ranks
Inside Montana, Stanford sits at just the 9th percentile even though it scores 44th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Stanford ranks 17,687 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 17,874 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 433 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Stanford and the insurance market
Stanford's elevated wildfire rating (44th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Stanford's 91.5% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Stanford's 17,687-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Stanford, see the exposure-zones guide.