Port Townsend, WA
Port Townsend, WA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Port Townsend's 5,667 buildings earn a 19th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Port Townsend at the 18th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 55.9% of Port Townsend's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 8% Direct and 36% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 5,667 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Port Townsend compares
Port Townsend scores 19th nationally and 27th within Washington — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Port Townsend ranks 25,609 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,054 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 458 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Port Townsend
At the 19th national percentile, Port Townsend rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Port Townsend
Port Townsend's 55.9% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 5,667 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Port Townsend. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Port Townsend, see the exposure-zones guide.