Waseca, MN
How exposed is Waseca to wildfire?
Waseca's 3,704 buildings earn a 35th-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.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Waseca at the 28th national percentile — 6 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 classifies 86.2% of Waseca's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 11.1% Direct and 2.7% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Where Waseca ranks
Waseca's risk sits at a similar level relative to Minnesota (45th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (35th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Waseca ranks 20,546 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,516 by building count (1 is largest). Within Minnesota alone, it ranks 509 of 914 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Minnesota on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Waseca's moderate wildfire rating (35th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 86.2% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Waseca gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Waseca's 20,546-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Waseca, see the exposure-zones guide.