Methuen, MA
How exposed is Methuen to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Methuen at the 29th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 16,438 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Methuen at the 25th national percentile — 4 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Methuen's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 74.4% of Methuen's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 13.2% Direct and 12.4% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 16,438 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Methuen against the rest of the country
Compare Methuen's two percentiles: 71st within Massachusetts, only 29th nationally — a gap of 42 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Methuen ranks 22,403 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 882 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 73 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Methuen's moderate wildfire rating (29th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 74.4% of Methuen outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Methuen's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 16,438 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Methuen. The exposure-zones guide covers what Methuen's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.