Brigantine, NJ
How exposed is Brigantine to wildfire?
Brigantine sits at the 74th 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 5,893 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Brigantine at the 61st percentile, lower than its 74th-percentile risk score, because so much is actually built here.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Brigantine's buildings (99.7% of 5,893) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 5,893 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Brigantine compares
There's little gap between Brigantine's 74th national percentile and its 82nd percentile inside New Jersey, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Brigantine ranks 8,257 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,924 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Jersey alone, it ranks 128 of 700 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Jersey on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 74th percentile nationally, Brigantine 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
Even with 99.7% of Brigantine outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Brigantine's figures come from
Brigantine's 74th-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 Brigantine's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.