Brandywine, WV
Brandywine wildfire risk explained
Brandywine sits at the 71st percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 212 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Brandywine's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 70th percentile nationally.
Brandywine's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Brandywine: 59% of its 212 buildings, versus 41% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Brandywine ranks
There's little gap between Brandywine's 71st national percentile and its 65th percentile inside West Virginia, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Brandywine ranks 9,063 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,423 by building count (1 is largest). Within West Virginia alone, it ranks 152 of 429 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for West Virginia on its state page.
Brandywine and the insurance market
At the 71st percentile nationally, Brandywine carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
What would actually reduce this score
Brandywine's 59% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Brandywine's 9,063-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Brandywine, see the exposure-zones guide.