Rupert, WV
Rupert wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Rupert lands at the 61st percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 628 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 Rupert at the 61st percentile, close to its 61st-percentile risk score.
Rupert's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Rupert's buildings (64.8%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Where Rupert ranks
Rupert's risk sits at a similar level relative to West Virginia (50th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (61st) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Rupert ranks 12,467 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,475 by building count (1 is largest). Within West Virginia alone, it ranks 216 of 429 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for West Virginia on its state page.
Rupert and the insurance market
Rupert's 61st-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Hardening a home in Rupert
Rupert's 64.8% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Rupert's 12,467-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Rupert, see the exposure-zones guide.