Tahlequah, OK
Tahlequah, OK's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Tahlequah sits at the 94th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 6,962 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Tahlequah's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 96th percentile nationally.
Where Tahlequah's buildings actually sit
50.2% of Tahlequah's 6,962 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 35.5% Direct and 14.3% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone. At 6,962 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Tahlequah compares
Inside Oklahoma, Tahlequah sits at just the 72nd percentile even though it scores 94th 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, Tahlequah ranks 1,929 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,484 by building count (1 is largest). Within Oklahoma alone, it ranks 238 of 834 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Oklahoma on its state page.
Tahlequah and the insurance market
Tahlequah's 94th-percentile, very 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 50.2% of Tahlequah'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
Tahlequah's 94th-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 Tahlequah, see the exposure-zones guide.