Riverhead, NY
Riverhead wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Riverhead lands at the 50th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 5,731 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Riverhead at the 45th national percentile — 5 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Riverhead's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 38.6% of Riverhead's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 27.3% Direct and 34.1% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 5,731 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Riverhead against the rest of the country
Riverhead's 95th-percentile standing inside New York outpaces its 50th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Riverhead ranks 15,730 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,018 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 69 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
Riverhead and the insurance market
Riverhead's elevated wildfire rating (50th 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
Even with 38.6% of Riverhead outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Riverhead's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 5,731 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Riverhead. The exposure-zones guide covers what Riverhead's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.