Harrisburg, PA
Harrisburg, PA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Harrisburg at the 32nd national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 17,983 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 Harrisburg at the 30th percentile, close to its 32nd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 0.8% of Harrisburg's 17,983 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0.2% carry Indirect; the remaining 98.9% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 17,983 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Harrisburg against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Harrisburg's 32nd national percentile and its 43rd percentile inside Pennsylvania, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Harrisburg ranks 21,441 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 800 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 1,142 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.
Harrisburg and the insurance market
At the 32nd national percentile, Harrisburg rates moderate 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
Even with 98.9% of Harrisburg 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.
Where Harrisburg's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 17,983 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Harrisburg. The exposure-zones guide covers what Harrisburg's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.