Peabody, MA
Peabody, MA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Peabody at the 24th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 16,248 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Peabody at the 21st national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 2.2% of Peabody's 16,248 buildings carry Direct exposure and 10.3% carry Indirect; the remaining 87.5% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 16,248 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Peabody against the rest of the country
Compare Peabody's two percentiles: 40th within Massachusetts, only 24th nationally — a gap of 15 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Peabody ranks 23,859 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 893 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 150 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
Peabody's moderate wildfire rating (24th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Peabody's 87.5% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Peabody's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Peabody's 23,859-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Peabody's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.