Lakewood, NY
How exposed is Lakewood to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Lakewood at the 35th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 1,770 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 Lakewood at the 36th percentile, close to its 35th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
59.7% of Lakewood's 1,770 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 40.3% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
Lakewood against the rest of the country
Compare Lakewood's two percentiles: 75th within New York, only 35th nationally — a gap of 41 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lakewood ranks 20,616 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,154 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 323 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
Lakewood and the insurance market
Lakewood's moderate rating (35th 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
Lakewood's 59.7% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Lakewood's figures come from
Lakewood's 35th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Lakewood's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.