Sugar Grove, VA
Sugar Grove wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Sugar Grove lands at the 67th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 593 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 Sugar Grove at the 68th percentile, close to its 67th-percentile risk score.
Where Sugar Grove's buildings actually sit
Of Sugar Grove's 593 counted buildings, 93.9% 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.
Sugar Grove against the rest of the country
Sugar Grove's risk sits at a similar level relative to Virginia (79th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (67th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sugar Grove ranks 10,416 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,933 by building count (1 is largest). Within Virginia alone, it ranks 145 of 681 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Virginia on its state page.
Sugar Grove and the insurance market
Sugar Grove's 67th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because Direct exposure dominates in Sugar Grove (93.9%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
Where Sugar Grove's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Sugar Grove's 10,416-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Sugar Grove's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.