Highland Falls, NY
How exposed is Highland Falls to wildfire?
Highland Falls sits at the 50th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 1,396 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Highland Falls at the 48th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Highland Falls's buildings actually sit
Most of Highland Falls's buildings (81.6%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Highland Falls against the rest of the country
Highland Falls's 95th-percentile standing inside New York outpaces its 50th 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, Highland Falls ranks 15,763 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,645 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 72 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
Highland Falls and the insurance market
Highland Falls's elevated wildfire rating (50th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Hardening a home in Highland Falls
Because 81.6% of Highland Falls'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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Highland Falls's 15,763-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Highland Falls, see the exposure-zones guide.