The Dalles, OR
How exposed is The Dalles to wildfire?
The Dalles sits at the 96th 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 7,326 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks The Dalles at the 97th national percentile — 1 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
Most of The Dalles's buildings (94%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone. At 7,326 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How The Dalles compares
The Dalles's risk sits at a similar level relative to Oregon (86th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (96th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, The Dalles ranks 1,243 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,331 by building count (1 is largest). Within Oregon alone, it ranks 58 of 420 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Oregon on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in The Dalles
The Dalles's 96th-percentile score lands in Oregon, the only two states requiring a wildfire disclosure at sale. Oregon's own hazard map feeds directly into that disclosure requirement. The disclosure-law guide covers what it requires.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in The Dalles (94% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind The Dalles's 1,243-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond The Dalles, see the exposure-zones guide.