Manchester, NH
Manchester, NH's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Manchester lands at the 25th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 31,746 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Manchester at the 20th national percentile — 4 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 76.2% of Manchester's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 4.5% Direct and 19.4% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 31,746 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Manchester against the rest of the country
Compare Manchester's two percentiles: 79th within New Hampshire, only 25th nationally — a gap of 54 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Manchester ranks 23,736 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 349 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Hampshire alone, it ranks 22 of 100 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Hampshire on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 25th national percentile, Manchester rates moderate 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 Manchester
Manchester's 76.2% 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.
More on how this number was built
Manchester's 25th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Manchester, see the exposure-zones guide.