Needham, MA
Needham wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Needham at the 36th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 10,673 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Needham at the 32nd national percentile — 4 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
USFS classifies 83.3% of Needham's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 13.7% Direct and 3% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 10,673 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Needham against the rest of the country
Within Massachusetts, Needham ranks higher (93rd percentile) than it does nationally (36th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Needham ranks 20,168 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,490 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 19 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Needham and the insurance market
Needham's moderate rating (36th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Needham
Needham's 83.3% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 10,673 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Needham. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Needham, see the exposure-zones guide.