Fitchburg, MA
Fitchburg, MA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Fitchburg at the 29th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 12,703 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Fitchburg at the 28th percentile, close to its 29th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
12,703 buildings are counted in Fitchburg, and 79.5% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 19.1% in Direct exposure or the 1.4% rated Minimal. At 12,703 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Fitchburg ranks
Compare Fitchburg's two percentiles: 74th within Massachusetts, only 29th nationally — a gap of 44 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Fitchburg ranks 22,251 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,203 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 66 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Fitchburg's moderate rating (29th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Fitchburg (79.5% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Fitchburg's 22,251-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Fitchburg, see the exposure-zones guide.