Spencer, MA
Spencer wildfire risk explained
Spencer's 2,024 buildings earn a 27th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Spencer at the 26th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Spencer's building exposure, zone by zone
73.5% of Spencer's 2,024 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 26.3% Direct and 0.2% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
How Spencer compares
Spencer's 58th-percentile standing inside Massachusetts outpaces its 27th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Spencer ranks 23,040 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,400 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 105 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Spencer and the insurance market
Spencer's moderate wildfire rating (27th 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
Spencer's 73.5% 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 Spencer's 23,040-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Spencer, see the exposure-zones guide.