West Lafayette, IN
West Lafayette wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, West Lafayette lands at the 14th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 7,356 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, West Lafayette's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 14th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
West Lafayette rates 85.3% Minimal exposure against just 14.3% Direct and 0.4% Indirect — of 7,356 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 7,356 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where West Lafayette ranks
Within Indiana, West Lafayette ranks higher (66th percentile) than it does nationally (14th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, West Lafayette ranks 27,159 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,321 by building count (1 is largest). Within Indiana alone, it ranks 334 of 967 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Indiana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in West Lafayette
At the 14th national percentile, West Lafayette rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
West Lafayette's 85.3% 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.
Where West Lafayette's figures come from
West Lafayette's 14th-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 West Lafayette's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.