Potomac Mills, VA
Potomac Mills wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Potomac Mills at the 17th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 1,621 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Potomac Mills's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 17th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 63.4% of Potomac Mills's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 35.8% Direct and 0.9% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Where Potomac Mills ranks
There's little gap between Potomac Mills's 17th national percentile and its 7th percentile inside Virginia, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Potomac Mills ranks 26,238 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,691 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 633 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Potomac Mills and the insurance market
Potomac Mills's low wildfire rating (17th 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.
Hardening a home in Potomac Mills
Even with 63.4% of Potomac Mills 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
Potomac Mills's 17th-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 Potomac Mills, see the exposure-zones guide.