Westerly, RI
How exposed is Westerly to wildfire?
Westerly's 8,518 buildings earn a 14th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places 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 Westerly at the 13th percentile, close to its 14th-percentile risk score.
Westerly's building exposure, zone by zone
40.1% of Westerly's 8,518 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 20.7% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 8,518 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Westerly compares
Within Rhode Island, Westerly ranks higher (46th percentile) than it does nationally (14th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Westerly ranks 27,057 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,948 by building count (1 is largest). Within Rhode Island alone, it ranks 20 of 36 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Rhode Island on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Westerly
Westerly's low wildfire rating (14th 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 Westerly
With 40.1% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Westerly gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Westerly's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Westerly's 27,057-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Westerly's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.