Centralia, PA
Centralia wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Centralia lands at the 60th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 10 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Centralia at the 58th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Centralia's 10 counted buildings, 60% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first. This is a small settlement by building count — 10 total — so these shares describe a handful of structures, not a statistical average across thousands.
Where Centralia ranks
Compare Centralia's two percentiles: 96th within Pennsylvania, only 60th nationally — a gap of 36 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Centralia ranks 12,647 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 31,511 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 76 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.
Centralia and the insurance market
Centralia's elevated wildfire rating (60th 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
Centralia's 60% 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 Centralia's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 10 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Centralia. Small places like Centralia (10 buildings) are exactly where USFS's underlying data gets sparsest — see the data-quality guide for the 517 places that didn't clear the bar.