Pocahontas, VA
How exposed is Pocahontas to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Pocahontas at the 83rd national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 244 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Pocahontas's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 86th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Pocahontas's buildings (68.4%) 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.
Pocahontas against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Pocahontas's 83rd national percentile and its 94th percentile inside Virginia, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pocahontas ranks 5,467 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 23,347 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 45 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Pocahontas
Pocahontas's 83rd-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
Pocahontas's 68.4% 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.
Where Pocahontas's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Pocahontas's 5,467-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Pocahontas's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.