Boissevain, VA
How exposed is Boissevain to wildfire?
USFS scores Boissevain at the 82nd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 387 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 Boissevain at the 84th percentile, close to its 82nd-percentile risk score.
Where Boissevain's buildings actually sit
Direct exposure dominates in Boissevain: 76% of its 387 buildings, versus 24% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Boissevain against the rest of the country
Boissevain scores 82nd nationally and 93rd within Virginia — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Boissevain ranks 5,846 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 19,478 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 50 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Boissevain and the insurance market
Boissevain's 82nd-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
Boissevain's 76% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 387 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Boissevain. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Boissevain, see the exposure-zones guide.