Jersey City, NJ
How exposed is Jersey City to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Jersey City lands at the 22nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 36,207 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Jersey City at the 21st national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Jersey City's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 0.1% of Jersey City's 36,207 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 99.9% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 36,207 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Jersey City ranks
There's little gap between Jersey City's 22nd national percentile and its 7th percentile inside New Jersey, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Jersey City ranks 24,743 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 292 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Jersey alone, it ranks 648 of 700 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Jersey on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Jersey City's moderate rating (22nd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
With 99.9% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Jersey City 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
Jersey City's 22nd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Jersey City, see the exposure-zones guide.