Birch Bay, WA
How exposed is Birch Bay to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Birch Bay lands at the 16th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 6,731 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Birch Bay at the 18th percentile, close to its 16th-percentile risk score.
Where Birch Bay's buildings actually sit
Only 20.5% of Birch Bay's 6,731 buildings carry Direct exposure and 29.5% carry Indirect; the remaining 50% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 6,731 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Birch Bay ranks
Birch Bay scores 16th nationally and 21st within Washington — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Birch Bay ranks 26,522 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,572 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 494 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 16th national percentile, Birch Bay rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Birch Bay
Birch Bay's 50% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 6,731 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Birch Bay. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Birch Bay, see the exposure-zones guide.