Chester Center, CT
How exposed is Chester Center to wildfire?
USFS scores Chester Center at the 43rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 986 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Chester Center at the 41st percentile, close to its 43rd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Chester Center's 986 counted buildings, 91.3% 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.
Chester Center against the rest of the country
Compare Chester Center's two percentiles: 92nd within Connecticut, only 43rd nationally — a gap of 48 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Chester Center ranks 17,893 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,034 by building count (1 is largest). Within Connecticut alone, it ranks 19 of 214 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Connecticut on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Chester Center's elevated rating (43rd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Chester Center
Because Direct exposure dominates in Chester Center (91.3%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Chester Center's 17,893-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Chester Center, see the exposure-zones guide.