The Pinehills, MA
How exposed is The Pinehills to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, The Pinehills lands at the 33rd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 1,931 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks The Pinehills at the 21st national percentile — 11 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of The Pinehills's buildings (63.3%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Where The Pinehills ranks
Within Massachusetts, The Pinehills ranks higher (87th percentile) than it does nationally (33rd) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, The Pinehills ranks 21,272 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,675 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 34 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
The Pinehills's moderate wildfire rating (33rd 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in The Pinehills (63.3% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind The Pinehills's 21,272-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond The Pinehills, see the exposure-zones guide.