Highgate Center, VT
How exposed is Highgate Center to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Highgate Center at the 6th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 216 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 Highgate Center at the 6th percentile, close to its 6th-percentile risk score.
Highgate Center's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 59.7% of Highgate Center's 216 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 40.3% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Highgate Center against the rest of the country
Highgate Center scores 6th nationally and 0th within Vermont — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Highgate Center ranks 29,740 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,291 by building count (1 is largest). Within Vermont alone, it ranks 179 of 179 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Vermont on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Highgate Center's low rating (6th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 59.7% of Highgate Center's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Highgate Center's 6th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Highgate Center, see the exposure-zones guide.