Westborough, MA
Westborough, MA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Westborough at the 25th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 1,369 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Westborough at the 23rd percentile, close to its 25th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 86.5% of Westborough's 1,369 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 13.5% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Westborough compares
Within Massachusetts, Westborough ranks higher (46th percentile) than it does nationally (25th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Westborough ranks 23,511 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,751 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 135 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Westborough and the insurance market
Westborough's moderate wildfire rating (25th 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.
Hardening a home in Westborough
Because 86.5% of Westborough'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.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,369 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Westborough. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Westborough, see the exposure-zones guide.