Dedham, MA
Dedham wildfire risk explained
Dedham's 9,115 buildings earn a 30th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Dedham at the 26th percentile, close to its 30th-percentile risk score.
Where Dedham's buildings actually sit
Most of Dedham's buildings (92.1% of 9,115) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 9,115 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Dedham against the rest of the country
Compare Dedham's two percentiles: 76th within Massachusetts, only 30th nationally — a gap of 46 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Dedham ranks 22,118 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,815 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 59 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Dedham and the insurance market
At the 30th national percentile, Dedham rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 92.1% of Dedham outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 9,115 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Dedham. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Dedham, see the exposure-zones guide.