Lancaster, VA
How exposed is Lancaster to wildfire?
Lancaster's 148 buildings earn a 44th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lancaster at the 45th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Lancaster's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Lancaster's 148 counted buildings, 83.1% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Lancaster compares
There's little gap between Lancaster's 44th national percentile and its 40th percentile inside Virginia, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lancaster ranks 17,758 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 26,972 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 407 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Lancaster
At the 44th national percentile, Lancaster rates elevated for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Lancaster
Because Direct exposure dominates in Lancaster (83.1%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lancaster's 17,758-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Lancaster, see the exposure-zones guide.