Sandwich, MA
Sandwich, MA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Sandwich at the 32nd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 2,000 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Sandwich at the 22nd national percentile — 10 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Sandwich's building exposure, zone by zone
55.6% of Sandwich's 2,000 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 27.7% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
How Sandwich compares
Within Massachusetts, Sandwich ranks higher (84th percentile) than it does nationally (32nd) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sandwich ranks 21,552 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,479 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 40 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Sandwich
Sandwich's moderate wildfire rating (32nd 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
Sandwich's 55.6% 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
Sandwich's 32nd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Sandwich, see the exposure-zones guide.