Newtown, MO
How exposed is Newtown to wildfire?
USFS scores Newtown at the 69th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 138 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Newtown at the 71st national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 66.7% of Newtown's 138 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 33.3% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Newtown compares
There's little gap between Newtown's 69th national percentile and its 79th percentile inside Missouri, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Newtown ranks 9,802 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 27,369 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 220 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Newtown and the insurance market
Newtown's 69th-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Newtown (66.7% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Newtown's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Newtown's 9,802-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Newtown's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.