Orange Lake, NY
How exposed is Orange Lake to wildfire?
Orange Lake sits at the 37th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 3,588 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Orange Lake at the 38th percentile, close to its 37th-percentile risk score.
Orange Lake's building exposure, zone by zone
3,588 buildings are counted in Orange Lake, and 61.7% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 8.8% rated Minimal.
How Orange Lake compares
Orange Lake's 80th-percentile standing inside New York outpaces its 37th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Orange Lake ranks 19,797 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,669 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 257 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
Orange Lake and the insurance market
Orange Lake's moderate wildfire rating (37th 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 Orange Lake
Orange Lake's 61.7% 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.
Where Orange Lake's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Orange Lake's 19,797-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Orange Lake's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.