Boston, MA
Boston, MA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Boston's 97,311 buildings earn a 22nd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Boston at the 19th percentile, close to its 22nd-percentile risk score.
Boston's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 98.8% of Boston's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 0.5% Direct and 0.7% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 97,311 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Boston compares
Boston scores 22nd nationally and 28th within Massachusetts — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Boston ranks 24,614 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 67 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 176 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Boston
At the 22nd national percentile, Boston rates moderate 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 Boston
Boston's 98.8% 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 97,311 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Boston. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Boston, see the exposure-zones guide.