Essex Village, CT
Essex Village wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Essex Village at the 34th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 1,652 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Essex Village's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 32nd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
1,652 buildings are counted in Essex Village, and 60.9% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 2.5% rated Minimal.
How Essex Village compares
Essex Village's 60th-percentile standing inside Connecticut outpaces its 34th 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, Essex Village ranks 20,790 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,588 by building count (1 is largest). Within Connecticut alone, it ranks 87 of 214 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Connecticut on its state page.
Essex Village and the insurance market
Essex Village's moderate wildfire rating (34th 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.
Hardening a home in Essex Village
Essex Village's 60.9% 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.
Where Essex Village's figures come from
Essex Village's 34th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Essex Village's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.