Hershey, PA
How exposed is Hershey to wildfire?
Hershey's 5,169 buildings earn a 22nd-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.)
Separately from the risk score above, Hershey's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 23rd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Hershey rates 66.7% Minimal exposure against just 22.3% Direct and 11% Indirect — of 5,169 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 5,169 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Hershey compares
Hershey scores 22nd nationally and 25th within Pennsylvania — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Hershey ranks 24,593 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,335 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 1,501 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 22nd national percentile, Hershey 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 66.7% of Hershey 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Hershey's 24,593-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Hershey, see the exposure-zones guide.