Montgomery, PA
Montgomery, PA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Montgomery at the 36th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 660 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Montgomery at the 36th national percentile — 1 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
85% of Montgomery's 660 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 15% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
Where Montgomery ranks
Montgomery's 53rd-percentile standing inside Pennsylvania outpaces its 36th 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, Montgomery ranks 20,088 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,066 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 935 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.
Montgomery and the insurance market
Montgomery's moderate wildfire rating (36th 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.
Hardening a home in Montgomery
Because 85% of Montgomery's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 660 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Montgomery. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Montgomery, see the exposure-zones guide.