Briar Creek, PA
Briar Creek, PA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Briar Creek at the 31st national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 413 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Briar Creek at the 31st percentile, close to its 31st-percentile risk score.
Where Briar Creek's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 51.8% of Briar Creek's 413 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 48.2% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Briar Creek compares
Briar Creek's risk sits at a similar level relative to Pennsylvania (39th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (31st) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Briar Creek ranks 21,879 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,976 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 1,206 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.
Briar Creek and the insurance market
Briar Creek's moderate wildfire rating (31st 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
Briar Creek's 51.8% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
Where Briar Creek's figures come from
Briar Creek's 31st-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Briar Creek's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.