Zap, ND
How exposed is Zap to wildfire?
Zap sits at the 68th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 256 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Zap's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 67th percentile nationally.
Where Zap's buildings actually sit
256 buildings are counted in Zap, and 63.7% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
Zap against the rest of the country
Compare Zap's two percentiles: 86th within North Dakota, only 68th nationally — a gap of 17 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Zap ranks 10,094 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 22,953 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Dakota alone, it ranks 61 of 402 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Dakota on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Zap
Zap'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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Zap's 63.7% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Zap's 68th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Zap, see the exposure-zones guide.