Bellows Falls, VT
How exposed is Bellows Falls to wildfire?
Bellows Falls sits at the 16th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 1,021 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Bellows Falls's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 16th percentile nationally.
Bellows Falls's building exposure, zone by zone
86.3% of Bellows Falls's 1,021 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 13.6% Direct and 0.1% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
Bellows Falls against the rest of the country
Compare Bellows Falls's two percentiles: 64th within Vermont, only 16th nationally — a gap of 47 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bellows Falls ranks 26,359 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,795 by building count (1 is largest). Within Vermont alone, it ranks 64 of 179 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Vermont on its state page.
Bellows Falls and the insurance market
Bellows Falls's low wildfire rating (16th 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
Because 86.3% of Bellows Falls's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Bellows Falls's 16th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Bellows Falls, see the exposure-zones guide.