Orchards, WA
Orchards wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Orchards at the 42nd national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 8,998 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Orchards's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 48th percentile nationally.
Orchards's building exposure, zone by zone
Orchards rates 83.4% Minimal exposure against just 5.9% Direct and 10.8% Indirect — of 8,998 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 8,998 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Orchards against the rest of the country
Compare Orchards's two percentiles: 58th within Washington, only 42nd nationally — a gap of 16 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Orchards ranks 18,296 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,843 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 262 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Orchards's elevated rating (42nd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
With 83.4% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Orchards gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Orchards's figures come from
Orchards's 42nd-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 Orchards's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.