Brandon, VT
Brandon wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Brandon at the 16th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 990 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Brandon at the 16th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Brandon's buildings actually sit
990 buildings are counted in Brandon, and 58.2% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
Brandon against the rest of the country
Within Vermont, Brandon ranks higher (52nd percentile) than it does nationally (16th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Brandon ranks 26,550 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,011 by building count (1 is largest). Within Vermont alone, it ranks 85 of 179 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Vermont on its state page.
Brandon and the insurance market
At the 16th national percentile, Brandon 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 Brandon
Because Direct exposure dominates in Brandon (58.2%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Brandon's 26,550-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Brandon, see the exposure-zones guide.