Montour Falls, NY
How exposed is Montour Falls to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Montour Falls lands at the 25th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 844 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 Montour Falls at the 24th percentile, close to its 25th-percentile risk score.
Where Montour Falls's buildings actually sit
60.9% of Montour Falls's 844 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 39.1% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
How Montour Falls compares
Compare Montour Falls's two percentiles: 53rd within New York, only 25th nationally — a gap of 28 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Montour Falls ranks 23,646 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,214 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 613 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Montour Falls's moderate wildfire rating (25th 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 Montour Falls
Because 60.9% of Montour Falls'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 844 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Montour Falls. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Montour Falls, see the exposure-zones guide.