Roanoke, VA
Roanoke, VA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Roanoke at the 54th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 38,472 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Roanoke's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 54th percentile nationally.
Roanoke's building exposure, zone by zone
Roanoke rates 70.8% Minimal exposure against just 7.7% Direct and 21.6% Indirect — of 38,472 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 38,472 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Roanoke against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Roanoke's 54th national percentile and its 60th percentile inside Virginia, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Roanoke ranks 14,421 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 260 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 276 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Roanoke
Roanoke's elevated wildfire rating (54th 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
With 70.8% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Roanoke gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 38,472 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Roanoke. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Roanoke, see the exposure-zones guide.