White Haven, MT
White Haven wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, White Haven lands at the 91st percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 488 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks White Haven at the 90th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where White Haven's buildings actually sit
71.1% of White Haven's 488 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 28.9% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
White Haven against the rest of the country
There's little gap between White Haven's 91st national percentile and its 80th percentile inside Montana, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, White Haven ranks 2,708 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 17,571 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 95 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
White Haven and the insurance market
White Haven's 91st-percentile, very high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Hardening a home in White Haven
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in White Haven (71.1% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind White Haven's 2,708-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond White Haven, see the exposure-zones guide.