Worcester, MA
Worcester wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Worcester lands at the 22nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 45,470 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Worcester at the 20th percentile, close to its 22nd-percentile risk score.
Worcester's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 72.6% of Worcester's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 5.5% Direct and 21.9% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 45,470 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Worcester ranks
Worcester's risk sits at a similar level relative to Massachusetts (29th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (22nd) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Worcester ranks 24,616 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 203 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 178 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Worcester
Worcester's moderate wildfire rating (22nd 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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 72.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Worcester gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Worcester's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Worcester's 24,616-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Worcester's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.