Three Lakes, MI
Three Lakes wildfire risk explained
Three Lakes's 286 buildings earn a 32nd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Three Lakes at the 32nd percentile, close to its 32nd-percentile risk score.
Three Lakes's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Three Lakes's 286 counted buildings, 96.5% carry Direct exposure and only 3.5% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Where Three Lakes ranks
Within Michigan, Three Lakes ranks higher (84th percentile) than it does nationally (32nd) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Three Lakes ranks 21,489 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 22,008 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 120 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Three Lakes's moderate rating (32nd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because Direct exposure dominates in Three Lakes (96.5%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Three Lakes's 21,489-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Three Lakes, see the exposure-zones guide.