Caribou, ME
Caribou wildfire risk explained
Caribou's 5,217 buildings earn a 11th-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 Caribou at the 11th percentile, close to its 11th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
45.2% of Caribou's 5,217 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 2,358 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 39.5% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 15.3% are Minimal. At 5,217 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Caribou compares
Caribou's 55th-percentile standing inside Maine outpaces its 11th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Caribou ranks 28,082 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,303 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maine alone, it ranks 71 of 155 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maine on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 11th national percentile, Caribou 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
Caribou's 45.2% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Caribou's 11th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Caribou, see the exposure-zones guide.