Great Falls, VA
How exposed is Great Falls to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Great Falls at the 20th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 6,754 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 Great Falls at the 19th percentile, close to its 20th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 97.2% of Great Falls's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 2.1% Indirect share and far above its 0.8% Minimal share — a profile where 6,564 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most. At 6,754 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Great Falls compares
Great Falls's risk sits at a similar level relative to Virginia (11th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (20th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Great Falls ranks 25,135 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,562 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 607 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Great Falls and the insurance market
Great Falls's moderate rating (20th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
With 97.2% of Great Falls in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 6,754 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Great Falls. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Great Falls, see the exposure-zones guide.