Cross Lanes, WV
Cross Lanes wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Cross Lanes lands at the 69th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 4,283 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Cross Lanes at the 70th percentile, close to its 69th-percentile risk score.
Where Cross Lanes's buildings actually sit
Indirect exposure is dominant in Cross Lanes (71.2% of 4,283 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 28.8% sit in the Direct zone.
Where Cross Lanes ranks
Cross Lanes scores 69th nationally and 62nd within West 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, Cross Lanes ranks 9,692 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,990 by building count (1 is largest). Within West Virginia alone, it ranks 162 of 429 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for West Virginia on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Cross Lanes's 69th-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
Cross Lanes's 71.2% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Cross Lanes's 9,692-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Cross Lanes, see the exposure-zones guide.