Pennside, PA
How exposed is Pennside to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Pennside at the 22nd national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 1,648 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Pennside's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 19th percentile nationally.
Pennside's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Pennside's buildings (79.4%) 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 Pennside compares
There's little gap between Pennside's 22nd national percentile and its 24th percentile inside Pennsylvania, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pennside ranks 24,721 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,598 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 1,517 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Pennside's moderate wildfire rating (22nd 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
Pennside's 79.4% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Pennside's 24,721-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Pennside, see the exposure-zones guide.