Ferndale, WA
How exposed is Ferndale to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Ferndale at the 11th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 5,212 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Ferndale at the 13th percentile, close to its 11th-percentile risk score.
Ferndale's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 44% of Ferndale's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 16.7% Direct and 39.3% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 5,212 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Ferndale compares
There's little gap between Ferndale's 11th national percentile and its 11th percentile inside Washington, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ferndale ranks 28,194 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,309 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 559 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 11th national percentile, Ferndale rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Ferndale's 44% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Ferndale's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 5,212 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Ferndale. The exposure-zones guide covers what Ferndale's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.