Paul Smiths, NY
How exposed is Paul Smiths to wildfire?
USFS scores Paul Smiths at the 13th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 52 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 Paul Smiths at the 13th percentile, close to its 13th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
52 buildings are counted in Paul Smiths, and 51.9% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 1.9% rated Minimal.
How Paul Smiths compares
Compare Paul Smiths's two percentiles: 33rd within New York, only 13th nationally — a gap of 20 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Paul Smiths ranks 27,306 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,881 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 871 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Paul Smiths
At the 13th national percentile, Paul Smiths rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Paul Smiths
Paul Smiths's 51.9% 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.
More on how this number was built
Paul Smiths's 13th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Paul Smiths, see the exposure-zones guide.