Lynchburg, VA
Lynchburg, VA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Lynchburg sits at the 44th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 28,738 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lynchburg at the 46th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Lynchburg's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 36% of Lynchburg's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 30.3% Direct and 33.8% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 28,738 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Lynchburg compares
Lynchburg's risk sits at a similar level relative to Virginia (41st percentile statewide) as it does nationally (44th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lynchburg ranks 17,631 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 412 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 402 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Lynchburg
Lynchburg's elevated rating (44th 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 36% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Lynchburg 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lynchburg's 17,631-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Lynchburg, see the exposure-zones guide.