Arlington, MA
How exposed is Arlington to wildfire?
Arlington sits at the 25th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 13,521 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 Arlington at the 22nd percentile, close to its 25th-percentile risk score.
Arlington's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 99.4% of Arlington's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 0.6% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 13,521 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Arlington ranks
Within Massachusetts, Arlington ranks higher (44th percentile) than it does nationally (25th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Arlington ranks 23,602 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,119 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 139 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Arlington and the insurance market
Arlington's moderate wildfire rating (25th 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
Even with 99.4% of Arlington 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.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 13,521 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Arlington. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Arlington, see the exposure-zones guide.