Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia, PA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Philadelphia sits at the 32nd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 224,621 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Philadelphia at the 32nd national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Philadelphia's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 2.8% of Philadelphia's 224,621 buildings carry Direct exposure and 1.9% carry Indirect; the remaining 95.3% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 224,621 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Philadelphia ranks
There's little gap between Philadelphia's 32nd national percentile and its 43rd percentile inside Pennsylvania, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Philadelphia ranks 21,409 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 22 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 1,139 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
Philadelphia's moderate wildfire rating (32nd 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
With 95.3% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Philadelphia gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 224,621 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Philadelphia. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Philadelphia, see the exposure-zones guide.