Milton, MA
Milton wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Milton at the 30th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 9,925 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Milton's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 26th percentile nationally.
Where Milton's buildings actually sit
Only 12.9% of Milton's 9,925 buildings carry Direct exposure and 22.1% carry Indirect; the remaining 65.1% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 9,925 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Milton ranks
Milton's 77th-percentile standing inside Massachusetts outpaces its 30th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Milton ranks 22,026 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,631 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 55 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Milton and the insurance market
Milton's moderate wildfire rating (30th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 65.1% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Milton 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
Milton's 30th-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 Milton, see the exposure-zones guide.