Columbia, PA
How exposed is Columbia to wildfire?
Columbia sits at the 7th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 2,411 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Columbia at the 6th percentile, close to its 7th-percentile risk score.
Columbia's building exposure, zone by zone
Columbia rates 89.9% Minimal exposure against just 10.1% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 2,411 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Where Columbia ranks
There's little gap between Columbia's 7th national percentile and its 4th percentile inside Pennsylvania, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Columbia ranks 29,233 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,490 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 1,903 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.
Columbia and the insurance market
Columbia's low wildfire rating (7th 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
Columbia's 89.9% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Columbia's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Columbia's 29,233-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Columbia's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.