Cambridge, VT
Cambridge wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Cambridge at the 15th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 113 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Cambridge at the 16th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Cambridge's buildings actually sit
50.4% of Cambridge's 113 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 57 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 49.6% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0% are Minimal.
How Cambridge compares
Cambridge's 47th-percentile standing inside Vermont outpaces its 15th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cambridge ranks 26,709 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 28,525 by building count (1 is largest). Within Vermont alone, it ranks 95 of 179 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Vermont on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Cambridge's low wildfire rating (15th 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
Cambridge's 50.4% 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 Cambridge's 26,709-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Cambridge, see the exposure-zones guide.