Bolivar, NY
How exposed is Bolivar to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Bolivar lands at the 14th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 638 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 Bolivar at the 14th percentile, close to its 14th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 70.4% of Bolivar's 638 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 29.6% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Bolivar ranks
Compare Bolivar's two percentiles: 34th within New York, only 14th nationally — a gap of 20 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bolivar ranks 26,953 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,364 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 847 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Bolivar
Bolivar's low wildfire rating (14th 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
Because 70.4% of Bolivar'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
Bolivar's 14th-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 Bolivar, see the exposure-zones guide.