Highland, NY
Highland wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Highland at the 37th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 2,275 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Highland at the 37th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Highland's buildings actually sit
Indirect exposure is dominant in Highland (58.1% of 2,275 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 41.7% sit in the Direct zone.
Where Highland ranks
Highland's 81st-percentile standing inside New York outpaces its 37th 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 ranks 19,736 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,761 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 252 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
Highland and the insurance market
Highland's moderate wildfire rating (37th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Highland's 58.1% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Highland's 19,736-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, see the exposure-zones guide.