Newtown, CT
Newtown wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Newtown lands at the 38th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 2,140 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 Newtown at the 36th percentile, close to its 38th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
64.1% of Newtown's 2,140 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 1,371 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 35.9% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0% are Minimal.
How Newtown compares
Compare Newtown's two percentiles: 70th within Connecticut, only 38th nationally — a gap of 32 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Newtown ranks 19,626 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,092 by building count (1 is largest). Within Connecticut alone, it ranks 65 of 214 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Connecticut on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Newtown
Newtown's moderate rating (38th 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
Newtown's 64.1% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Newtown's 19,626-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Newtown, see the exposure-zones guide.