Ballenger Creek, MD
Ballenger Creek wildfire risk explained
Ballenger Creek's 3,875 buildings earn a 12th-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 Ballenger Creek at the 11th percentile, close to its 12th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
87.9% of Ballenger Creek's 3,875 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 11.9% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
How Ballenger Creek compares
There's little gap between Ballenger Creek's 12th national percentile and its 9th percentile inside Maryland, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ballenger Creek ranks 27,608 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,359 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 480 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Ballenger Creek
At the 12th national percentile, Ballenger Creek rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
Ballenger Creek's 87.9% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Ballenger Creek's figures come from
Ballenger Creek's 12th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Ballenger Creek's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.