Palmer Town, MA
How exposed is Palmer Town to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Palmer Town at the 30th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 6,194 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Palmer Town's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 27th percentile nationally.
Palmer Town's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Palmer Town: 55.8% of its 6,194 buildings, versus 44.1% Indirect and 0.1% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap. At 6,194 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Palmer Town ranks
Palmer Town's 75th-percentile standing inside Massachusetts outpaces its 30th 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, Palmer Town ranks 22,220 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,801 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 64 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Palmer Town's moderate rating (30th 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
Palmer Town's 55.8% 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 Palmer Town's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 6,194 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Palmer Town. The exposure-zones guide covers what Palmer Town's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.