Charlottesville, VA
Charlottesville, VA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Charlottesville at the 38th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 13,949 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 Charlottesville at the 36th percentile, close to its 38th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
48.9% of Charlottesville's 13,949 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 23% Direct and 28.1% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone. At 13,949 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Charlottesville against the rest of the country
Charlottesville scores 38th nationally and 29th within Virginia — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Charlottesville ranks 19,621 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,078 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 485 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Charlottesville
At the 38th national percentile, Charlottesville 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 Charlottesville
Because 48.9% of Charlottesville's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Charlottesville's 19,621-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Charlottesville, see the exposure-zones guide.