Durham, NH
Durham wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Durham at the 27th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 1,212 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Durham at the 25th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Durham's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 55.2% of Durham's 1,212 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 44.8% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Durham compares
Durham's 87th-percentile standing inside New Hampshire outpaces its 27th 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, Durham ranks 22,920 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,583 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Hampshire alone, it ranks 14 of 100 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Hampshire on its state page.
Durham and the insurance market
At the 27th national percentile, Durham 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
Because 55.2% of Durham's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Durham's 27th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Durham, see the exposure-zones guide.