Baywood, VA
How exposed is Baywood to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Baywood lands at the 72nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 326 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Baywood's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 75th percentile nationally.
Baywood's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Baywood: 100% of its 326 buildings, versus 0% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Baywood against the rest of the country
Baywood's risk sits at a similar level relative to Virginia (86th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (72nd) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Baywood ranks 8,841 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 20,939 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 98 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Baywood and the insurance market
Baywood's 72nd-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
With 100% of Baywood in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Baywood's 8,841-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Baywood, see the exposure-zones guide.