Big Stone Gap, VA
Big Stone Gap, VA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Big Stone Gap at the 87th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 2,192 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Big Stone Gap at the 89th percentile, close to its 87th-percentile risk score.
Big Stone Gap's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 78.5% of Big Stone Gap's 2,192 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 21.5% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Big Stone Gap against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Big Stone Gap's 87th national percentile and its 97th percentile inside Virginia, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Big Stone Gap ranks 4,142 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,955 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 24 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Big Stone Gap's 87th-percentile, very 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 ember exposure the dominant pattern in Big Stone Gap (78.5% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Big Stone Gap's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Big Stone Gap's 4,142-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Big Stone Gap's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.