Pennington Gap, VA
How exposed is Pennington Gap to wildfire?
Pennington Gap's 1,005 buildings earn a 89th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Pennington Gap at the 91st percentile, close to its 89th-percentile risk score.
Where Pennington Gap's buildings actually sit
Most of Pennington Gap's buildings (72.8%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
How Pennington Gap compares
There's little gap between Pennington Gap's 89th national percentile and its 98th percentile inside Virginia, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pennington Gap ranks 3,543 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,899 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 18 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Pennington Gap's 89th-percentile, very high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Pennington Gap (72.8% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,005 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Pennington Gap. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Pennington Gap, see the exposure-zones guide.