Vails Gate, NY
How exposed is Vails Gate to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Vails Gate at the 32nd national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 691 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Vails Gate at the 32nd national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Vails Gate's building exposure, zone by zone
85.5% of Vails Gate's 691 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 9.3% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
Vails Gate against the rest of the country
Within New York, Vails Gate ranks higher (69th percentile) than it does nationally (32nd) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Vails Gate ranks 21,434 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 14,754 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 402 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
Vails Gate and the insurance market
Vails Gate's moderate wildfire rating (32nd 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
Vails Gate's 85.5% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Vails Gate's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Vails Gate's 21,434-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Vails Gate's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.