Wells Bridge, NY
Wells Bridge wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Wells Bridge at the 12th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 178 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Wells Bridge at the 12th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Wells Bridge's 178 counted buildings, 98.3% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Wells Bridge against the rest of the country
Wells Bridge's 29th-percentile standing inside New York outpaces its 12th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Wells Bridge ranks 27,808 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,721 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 921 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Wells Bridge's low wildfire rating (12th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Wells Bridge's 98.3% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Wells Bridge's 27,808-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Wells Bridge, see the exposure-zones guide.