Southside Chesconessex, VA
How exposed is Southside Chesconessex to wildfire?
USFS scores Southside Chesconessex at the 72nd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 136 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Southside Chesconessex's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 64th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Southside Chesconessex's 136 counted buildings, 80.2% carry Direct exposure and only 9.6% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Southside Chesconessex compares
Southside Chesconessex scores 72nd nationally and 86th within Virginia — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Southside Chesconessex ranks 8,809 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 27,473 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 97 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Southside Chesconessex and the insurance market
Southside Chesconessex's 72nd-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
With 80.2% of Southside Chesconessex in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Southside Chesconessex's 8,809-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Southside Chesconessex, see the exposure-zones guide.