North Eastham, MA
North Eastham wildfire risk explained
USFS scores North Eastham at the 21st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 3,227 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks North Eastham at the 16th national percentile — 5 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
Most of North Eastham's buildings (56.6% of 3,227) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure.
North Eastham against the rest of the country
There's little gap between North Eastham's 21st national percentile and its 26th percentile inside Massachusetts, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, North Eastham ranks 24,775 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,132 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 184 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
North Eastham and the insurance market
North Eastham's moderate wildfire rating (21st 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 North Eastham
Even with 56.6% of North Eastham outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind North Eastham's 24,775-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond North Eastham, see the exposure-zones guide.