Waterville, WA
Waterville, WA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Waterville's 820 buildings earn a 94th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (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 96th percentile, close to its 94th-percentile risk score.
Waterville's building exposure, zone by zone
80.2% of Waterville's 820 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 19.8% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
How Waterville compares
There's little gap between Waterville's 94th national percentile and its 86th percentile inside Washington, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Waterville ranks 1,780 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,458 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 91 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Waterville's 94th-percentile, very high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 80.2% of Waterville's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Waterville's figures come from
Waterville's 94th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Waterville's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.