Arbutus, MD
Arbutus, MD's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Arbutus lands at the 18th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 6,749 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Arbutus at the 17th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Arbutus's building exposure, zone by zone
Arbutus rates 71% Minimal exposure against just 10.6% Direct and 18.4% Indirect — of 6,749 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 6,749 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Arbutus compares
Arbutus scores 18th nationally and 21st within Maryland — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Arbutus ranks 25,870 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,563 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 418 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Arbutus
At the 18th national percentile, Arbutus rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 71% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Arbutus gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Arbutus's 25,870-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Arbutus, see the exposure-zones guide.