Chester, PA
Chester wildfire risk explained
Chester's 6,234 buildings earn a 42nd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Chester's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 41st percentile nationally.
Chester's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 1.2% of Chester's 6,234 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 98.8% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 6,234 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Chester ranks
Chester's 66th-percentile standing inside Pennsylvania outpaces its 42nd 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, Chester ranks 18,386 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,784 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 679 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.
Chester and the insurance market
Chester's elevated rating (42nd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
With 98.8% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Chester gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Chester's 42nd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Chester, see the exposure-zones guide.