Newport News, VA
How exposed is Newport News to wildfire?
USFS scores Newport News at the 49th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 60,372 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Newport News at the 49th percentile, close to its 49th-percentile risk score.
Newport News's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 59.1% of Newport News's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 23% Direct and 17.9% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 60,372 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Newport News against the rest of the country
Newport News's risk sits at a similar level relative to Virginia (52nd percentile statewide) as it does nationally (49th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Newport News ranks 15,995 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 132 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 329 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Newport News and the insurance market
Newport News's elevated rating (49th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Newport News's 59.1% 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.
Where Newport News's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 60,372 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Newport News. The exposure-zones guide covers what Newport News's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.