Whitefish Bay, WI
How exposed is Whitefish Bay to wildfire?
Whitefish Bay sits at the 20th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 7,254 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Whitefish Bay at the 22nd percentile, close to its 20th-percentile risk score.
Whitefish Bay's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 97.7% of Whitefish Bay's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 2.3% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 7,254 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Whitefish Bay compares
There's little gap between Whitefish Bay's 20th national percentile and its 29th percentile inside Wisconsin, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Whitefish Bay ranks 25,390 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,361 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 576 of 808 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Wisconsin on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Whitefish Bay
At the 20th national percentile, Whitefish Bay 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
Even with 97.7% of Whitefish Bay 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 Whitefish Bay's figures come from
Whitefish Bay's 20th-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 Whitefish Bay's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.