Easthampton, MA
Easthampton wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Easthampton lands at the 28th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 7,010 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 Easthampton at the 25th percentile, close to its 28th-percentile risk score.
Easthampton's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Easthampton's buildings (64.6%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone. At 7,010 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Easthampton against the rest of the country
Within Massachusetts, Easthampton ranks higher (64th percentile) than it does nationally (28th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Easthampton ranks 22,782 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,459 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 90 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Easthampton and the insurance market
Easthampton's moderate wildfire rating (28th 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
Easthampton's 64.6% 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.
Where Easthampton's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 7,010 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Easthampton. The exposure-zones guide covers what Easthampton's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.