Cedar Crest, MA
How exposed is Cedar Crest to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Cedar Crest at the 18th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 1,020 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 Cedar Crest at the 16th percentile, close to its 18th-percentile risk score.
Cedar Crest's building exposure, zone by zone
1,020 buildings are counted in Cedar Crest, and 79% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 20.8% in Direct exposure or the 0.2% rated Minimal.
Where Cedar Crest ranks
There's little gap between Cedar Crest's 18th national percentile and its 14th percentile inside Massachusetts, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cedar Crest ranks 25,872 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,798 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 212 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Cedar Crest and the insurance market
Cedar Crest's low wildfire rating (18th 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.
Hardening a home in Cedar Crest
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Cedar Crest (79% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Cedar Crest's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Cedar Crest's 25,872-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Cedar Crest's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.