Old Bridge, NJ
Old Bridge wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Old Bridge at the 63rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 8,255 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 Old Bridge at the 62nd percentile, close to its 63rd-percentile risk score.
Where Old Bridge's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 73.5% of Old Bridge's 8,255 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 16.4% Direct and 10.1% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 8,255 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Old Bridge ranks
There's little gap between Old Bridge's 63rd national percentile and its 73rd percentile inside New Jersey, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Old Bridge ranks 11,605 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,026 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Jersey alone, it ranks 193 of 700 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Jersey on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Old Bridge
Old Bridge's high rating (63rd percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 73.5% of Old Bridge's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Old Bridge's figures come from
Old Bridge's 63rd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Old Bridge's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.