Ridgefield, NJ
How exposed is Ridgefield to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Ridgefield lands at the 22nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 3,198 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Ridgefield at the 24th percentile, close to its 22nd-percentile risk score.
Where Ridgefield's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 98.7% of Ridgefield's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 1.3% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Where Ridgefield ranks
There's little gap between Ridgefield's 22nd national percentile and its 8th percentile inside New Jersey, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ridgefield ranks 24,492 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,166 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Jersey alone, it ranks 642 of 700 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Jersey on its state page.
Ridgefield and the insurance market
Ridgefield's moderate rating (22nd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Ridgefield's 98.7% 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 Ridgefield's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 3,198 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Ridgefield. The exposure-zones guide covers what Ridgefield's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.