Wauwatosa, WI
How exposed is Wauwatosa to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Wauwatosa lands at the 19th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 23,223 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Wauwatosa's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 23rd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Wauwatosa rates 95.2% Minimal exposure against just 4.8% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 23,223 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 23,223 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Wauwatosa against the rest of the country
Wauwatosa scores 19th nationally and 28th within Wisconsin — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Wauwatosa ranks 25,453 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 564 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 579 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
At the 19th national percentile, Wauwatosa rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Wauwatosa's 95.2% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Wauwatosa's 25,453-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Wauwatosa, see the exposure-zones guide.