WildfireRiskFinder

Wheatland, PA

How exposed is Wheatland to wildfire?

Moderate
35thpercentile nationally

USFS scores Wheatland at the 35th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 509 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)

Separately from the risk score above, Wheatland's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 36th percentile nationally.

What "at risk" means for the buildings here

509Total buildings
17.7%Direct exposure
2%Indirect exposure
80.4%Minimal exposure

Only 17.7% of Wheatland's 509 buildings carry Direct exposure and 2% carry Indirect; the remaining 80.4% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.

Wheatland against the rest of the country

Compare Wheatland's two percentiles: 51st within Pennsylvania, only 35th nationally — a gap of 16 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Wheatland ranks 20,372 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 17,198 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 980 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.

Wheatland and the insurance market

Wheatland's moderate rating (35th 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

Even with 80.4% of Wheatland outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.

More on how this number was built

Every one of the two percentiles behind Wheatland's 20,372-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Wheatland, see the exposure-zones guide.