Fords, NJ
How exposed is Fords to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Fords at the 38th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 4,087 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 Fords at the 37th percentile, close to its 38th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Fords rates 98.4% Minimal exposure against just 1.6% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 4,087 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Fords against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Fords's 38th national percentile and its 39th percentile inside New Jersey, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Fords ranks 19,634 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,154 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Jersey alone, it ranks 426 of 700 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Jersey on its state page.
Fords and the insurance market
Fords's moderate wildfire rating (38th 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 Fords
Even with 98.4% of Fords outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 4,087 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Fords. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Fords, see the exposure-zones guide.