Matheny, WV
How exposed is Matheny to wildfire?
Matheny sits at the 92nd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 360 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Matheny at the 94th percentile, close to its 92nd-percentile risk score.
Matheny's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Matheny's 360 counted buildings, 71.1% 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.
Matheny against the rest of the country
Matheny's risk sits at a similar level relative to West Virginia (87th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (92nd) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Matheny ranks 2,601 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 20,075 by building count (1 is largest). Within West Virginia alone, it ranks 59 of 429 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for West Virginia on its state page.
Matheny and the insurance market
Matheny's 92nd-percentile, very 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
Matheny's 71.1% 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
Matheny's 92nd-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 Matheny, see the exposure-zones guide.