Oak Bluffs, MA
How exposed is Oak Bluffs to wildfire?
USFS scores Oak Bluffs at the 14th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 2,540 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Oak Bluffs at the 11th national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Oak Bluffs's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 7.4% of Oak Bluffs's 2,540 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 92.6% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
How Oak Bluffs compares
Oak Bluffs scores 14th nationally and 5th within Massachusetts — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Oak Bluffs ranks 26,979 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,226 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 237 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Oak Bluffs and the insurance market
Oak Bluffs's low rating (14th 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 Oak Bluffs
Even with 92.6% of Oak Bluffs 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.
Where Oak Bluffs's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Oak Bluffs's 26,979-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Oak Bluffs's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.