Prichard, WV
Prichard wildfire risk explained
Prichard's 353 buildings earn a 72nd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Prichard at the 75th percentile, close to its 72nd-percentile risk score.
Prichard's building exposure, zone by zone
Indirect exposure is dominant in Prichard (89.5% of 353 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 10.5% sit in the Direct zone.
How Prichard compares
There's little gap between Prichard's 72nd national percentile and its 65th percentile inside West Virginia, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Prichard ranks 8,998 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 20,253 by building count (1 is largest). Within West Virginia alone, it ranks 151 of 429 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for West Virginia on its state page.
Prichard and the insurance market
Prichard's 72nd-percentile, 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
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Prichard (89.5% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Prichard's 72nd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Prichard, see the exposure-zones guide.