Piffard, NY
How exposed is Piffard to wildfire?
USFS scores Piffard at the 5th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 136 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 Piffard at the 6th percentile, close to its 5th-percentile risk score.
Where Piffard's buildings actually sit
72.1% of Piffard's 136 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 98 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 24.3% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 3.7% are Minimal.
Where Piffard ranks
Piffard scores 5th nationally and 6th within New York — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Piffard ranks 29,824 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 27,458 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 1,209 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Piffard
Piffard's low wildfire rating (5th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Piffard's 72.1% 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.
Where Piffard's figures come from
Piffard's 5th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Piffard's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.