Monaca, PA
How exposed is Monaca to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Monaca lands at the 27th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 2,918 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Monaca at the 27th percentile, close to its 27th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
93.1% of Monaca's 2,918 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 5.8% Direct and 1.1% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
How Monaca compares
Monaca scores 27th nationally and 32nd within Pennsylvania — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Monaca ranks 23,141 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,555 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 1,361 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Monaca's moderate wildfire rating (27th 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
Monaca's 93.1% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Monaca's 23,141-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Monaca, see the exposure-zones guide.