Reading, PA
How exposed is Reading to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Reading at the 18th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 7,931 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Reading at the 16th national percentile — 2 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 puts 54.9% of Reading's 7,931 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 8.2% Direct and 36.9% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 7,931 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Reading against the rest of the country
Reading's risk sits at a similar level relative to Pennsylvania (19th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (18th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Reading ranks 25,859 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,134 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 1,614 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Reading
Reading's low wildfire rating (18th 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
Because 54.9% of Reading's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Reading's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 7,931 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Reading. The exposure-zones guide covers what Reading's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.