Richmond, VA
Richmond wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Richmond at the 27th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 80,463 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Richmond's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 28th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
76.3% of Richmond's 80,463 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 20.5% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 80,463 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Richmond against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Richmond's 27th national percentile and its 17th percentile inside Virginia, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Richmond ranks 22,992 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 93 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 563 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
Richmond's moderate wildfire rating (27th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Richmond's 76.3% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Richmond's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 80,463 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Richmond. The exposure-zones guide covers what Richmond's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.