Waterville, ME
Waterville wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Waterville at the 7th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 5,793 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Waterville at the 7th percentile, close to its 7th-percentile risk score.
Waterville's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 15.8% of Waterville's 5,793 buildings carry Direct exposure and 38.7% carry Indirect; the remaining 45.5% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 5,793 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Waterville compares
Waterville scores 7th nationally and 7th within Maine — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Waterville ranks 29,375 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,985 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maine alone, it ranks 144 of 155 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maine on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Waterville
Waterville's low rating (7th 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
With 45.5% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Waterville 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
Waterville's 7th-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 Waterville, see the exposure-zones guide.