Budd Lake, NJ
Budd Lake, NJ's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Budd Lake's 3,416 buildings earn a 33rd-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.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Budd Lake at the 31st national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Budd Lake's buildings actually sit
3,416 buildings are counted in Budd Lake, and 64.3% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0.2% rated Minimal.
How Budd Lake compares
There's little gap between Budd Lake's 33rd national percentile and its 31st 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, Budd Lake ranks 21,148 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,894 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Jersey alone, it ranks 485 of 700 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Jersey on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Budd Lake
At the 33rd national percentile, Budd Lake 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 Budd Lake
Budd Lake's 64.3% 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.
Where Budd Lake's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Budd Lake's 21,148-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Budd Lake's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.