Amherst Town, MA
How exposed is Amherst Town to wildfire?
Amherst Town's 7,276 buildings earn a 28th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Amherst Town's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 25th percentile nationally.
Amherst Town's building exposure, zone by zone
62.9% of Amherst Town's 7,276 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 4,575 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 36.3% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0.8% are Minimal. At 7,276 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Amherst Town against the rest of the country
Within Massachusetts, Amherst Town ranks higher (67th percentile) than it does nationally (28th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Amherst Town ranks 22,596 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,353 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 80 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Amherst Town and the insurance market
Amherst Town's moderate wildfire rating (28th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Amherst Town's 62.9% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Amherst Town's 22,596-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Amherst Town, see the exposure-zones guide.