Dorchester, TX
Dorchester wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Dorchester at the 73rd national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 95 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Dorchester at the 72nd national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Dorchester's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Dorchester's 95 counted buildings, 75.8% 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.
Where Dorchester ranks
Dorchester ranks lower within Texas (41st percentile statewide) than its 73rd national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Dorchester ranks 8,390 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,290 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,057 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Dorchester
Dorchester's 73rd-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
Dorchester's 75.8% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Dorchester's 8,390-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Dorchester, see the exposure-zones guide.