Plainview, NY
Plainview wildfire risk explained
Plainview sits at the 31st 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 9,196 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Plainview's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 32nd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Plainview's buildings (94.4% of 9,196) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 9,196 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Plainview compares
Compare Plainview's two percentiles: 67th within New York, only 31st nationally — a gap of 36 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Plainview ranks 21,624 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,794 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 423 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Plainview's moderate rating (31st percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 94.4% of Plainview outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Plainview's 21,624-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Plainview, see the exposure-zones guide.