Pounding Mill, VA
Pounding Mill, VA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Pounding Mill's 325 buildings earn a 86th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Pounding Mill at the 88th percentile, close to its 86th-percentile risk score.
Where Pounding Mill's buildings actually sit
Of Pounding Mill's 325 counted buildings, 80% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Pounding Mill compares
Pounding Mill's risk sits at a similar level relative to Virginia (96th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (86th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pounding Mill ranks 4,364 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 20,975 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 28 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Pounding Mill's 86th-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
Because Direct exposure dominates in Pounding Mill (80%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 325 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Pounding Mill. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Pounding Mill, see the exposure-zones guide.