Lykens, PA
Lykens wildfire risk explained
Lykens's 861 buildings earn a 65th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lykens at the 61st national percentile — 4 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Lykens's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 91.1% of Lykens's 861 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 8.9% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Lykens ranks
Compare Lykens's two percentiles: 99th within Pennsylvania, only 65th nationally — a gap of 34 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lykens ranks 11,131 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,072 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 23 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Lykens
Lykens's 65th-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.
Hardening a home in Lykens
Because 91.1% of Lykens's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Lykens's figures come from
Lykens's 65th-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 Lykens's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.