Portsmouth, VA
How exposed is Portsmouth to wildfire?
Portsmouth's 39,257 buildings earn a 40th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Portsmouth at the 38th percentile, close to its 40th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Portsmouth's buildings (86.1% of 39,257) 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 39,257 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Portsmouth compares
Portsmouth's risk sits at a similar level relative to Virginia (32nd percentile statewide) as it does nationally (40th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Portsmouth ranks 19,086 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 253 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 466 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Portsmouth and the insurance market
Portsmouth's moderate wildfire rating (40th 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 86.1% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Portsmouth 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
Portsmouth's 40th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Portsmouth, see the exposure-zones guide.