Whitehall, MT
Whitehall wildfire risk explained
Whitehall's 775 buildings earn a 68th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Whitehall at the 66th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Whitehall's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Whitehall's buildings (90.1%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Whitehall against the rest of the country
Whitehall's 68th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 36th ranking inside Montana does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 32 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Whitehall ranks 9,996 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,868 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 304 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Whitehall's 68th-percentile, 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 Whitehall
Because 90.1% of Whitehall's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 775 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Whitehall. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Whitehall, see the exposure-zones guide.