Watertown, WI
How exposed is Watertown to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Watertown lands at the 32nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 9,168 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 Watertown at the 33rd percentile, close to its 32nd-percentile risk score.
Watertown's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Watertown's buildings (91.6% of 9,168) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 9,168 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Watertown against the rest of the country
Within Wisconsin, Watertown ranks higher (70th 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, Watertown ranks 21,513 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,802 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 244 of 808 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Wisconsin on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Watertown's moderate rating (32nd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
With 91.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Watertown gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Watertown's 32nd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Watertown, see the exposure-zones guide.