Watertown, MA
Watertown, MA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Watertown sits at the 24th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 8,764 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 Watertown at the 22nd percentile, close to its 24th-percentile risk score.
Where Watertown's buildings actually sit
99.8% of Watertown's 8,764 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 0.2% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 8,764 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Watertown ranks
Within Massachusetts, Watertown ranks higher (41st percentile) than it does nationally (24th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Watertown ranks 23,832 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,903 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 148 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Watertown
Watertown's moderate rating (24th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 99.8% of Watertown 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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Watertown's 23,832-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Watertown, see the exposure-zones guide.