Harwich Center, MA
Harwich Center wildfire risk explained
Harwich Center's 1,333 buildings earn a 35th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Harwich Center at the 24th percentile, lower than its 35th-percentile risk score, because so much is actually built here.
Where Harwich Center's buildings actually sit
Harwich Center rates 53.6% Minimal exposure against just 22.4% Direct and 24.1% Indirect — of 1,333 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Harwich Center against the rest of the country
Harwich Center's 90th-percentile standing inside Massachusetts outpaces its 35th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Harwich Center ranks 20,570 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,917 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 25 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Harwich Center and the insurance market
At the 35th national percentile, Harwich Center rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
With 53.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Harwich Center gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Harwich Center's 20,570-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Harwich Center, see the exposure-zones guide.