Falmouth, VA
Falmouth wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Falmouth at the 35th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 1,639 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Falmouth at the 34th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Direct exposure dominates in Falmouth: 58.6% of its 1,639 buildings, versus 14.5% Indirect and 26.9% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
How Falmouth compares
Falmouth scores 35th nationally and 24th within Virginia — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Falmouth ranks 20,595 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,626 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 516 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Falmouth and the insurance market
Falmouth's moderate wildfire rating (35th 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 Falmouth
Falmouth's 58.6% 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 Falmouth's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Falmouth's 20,595-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Falmouth's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.