Shipman, VA
Shipman, VA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Shipman at the 64th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 318 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Shipman at the 64th percentile, close to its 64th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Shipman's 318 counted buildings, 100% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Shipman compares
Shipman's risk sits at a similar level relative to Virginia (74th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (64th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Shipman ranks 11,330 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,166 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 176 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Shipman and the insurance market
Shipman's 64th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Shipman's 100% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Shipman's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Shipman's 11,330-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Shipman's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.