Belle Mead, NJ
How exposed is Belle Mead to wildfire?
USFS scores Belle Mead at the 31st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 1,174 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Belle Mead's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 31st percentile nationally.
Where Belle Mead's buildings actually sit
Most of Belle Mead's buildings (55.5%) 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.
Belle Mead against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Belle Mead's 31st national percentile and its 27th percentile inside New Jersey, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Belle Mead ranks 21,840 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,803 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Jersey alone, it ranks 515 of 700 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Jersey on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Belle Mead's moderate wildfire rating (31st 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Belle Mead's 55.5% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Belle Mead's 21,840-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Belle Mead, see the exposure-zones guide.