Rochester, NY
How exposed is Rochester to wildfire?
Rochester's 69,923 buildings earn a 7th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Rochester at the 7th percentile, close to its 7th-percentile risk score.
Where Rochester's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 92.4% of Rochester's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 2.6% Direct and 5.1% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 69,923 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Rochester against the rest of the country
Rochester's risk sits at a similar level relative to New York (11th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (7th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Rochester ranks 29,448 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 114 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 1,146 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
Rochester and the insurance market
At the 7th national percentile, Rochester rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Rochester's 92.4% 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.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 69,923 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Rochester. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Rochester, see the exposure-zones guide.