Linville, VA
Linville, VA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Linville at the 69th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 221 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Linville at the 70th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Direct exposure dominates in Linville: 100% of its 221 buildings, versus 0% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Linville ranks
There's little gap between Linville's 69th national percentile and its 80th percentile inside Virginia, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Linville ranks 9,943 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,104 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 134 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Linville and the insurance market
Linville's 69th-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
Linville's 100% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Linville's 69th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Linville, see the exposure-zones guide.