Waukesha (City), WI
Waukesha (City) wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Waukesha (City) at the 34th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 24,487 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Waukesha (City)'s burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 35th percentile nationally.
Where Waukesha (City)'s buildings actually sit
Waukesha (City) rates 87.9% Minimal exposure against just 7.8% Direct and 4.3% Indirect — of 24,487 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 24,487 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Waukesha (City) against the rest of the country
Compare Waukesha (City)'s two percentiles: 77th within Wisconsin, only 34th nationally — a gap of 44 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Waukesha (City) ranks 20,914 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 523 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 185 of 808 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Wisconsin on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Waukesha (City)'s moderate wildfire rating (34th 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
Even with 87.9% of Waukesha (City) outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Waukesha (City)'s figures come from
Waukesha (City)'s 34th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Waukesha (City)'s dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.