Swampscott, MA
How exposed is Swampscott to wildfire?
Swampscott sits at the 19th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 5,025 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Swampscott at the 17th percentile, close to its 19th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 1.5% of Swampscott's 5,025 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 98.5% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 5,025 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Swampscott against the rest of the country
Swampscott's risk sits at a similar level relative to Massachusetts (18th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (19th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Swampscott ranks 25,591 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,416 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 203 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Swampscott's low wildfire rating (19th 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
Even with 98.5% of Swampscott outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Swampscott's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Swampscott's 25,591-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Swampscott's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.