Carlisle, PA
How exposed is Carlisle to wildfire?
Carlisle sits at the 16th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 5,189 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Carlisle at the 17th percentile, close to its 16th-percentile risk score.
Where Carlisle's buildings actually sit
Only 7.9% of Carlisle's 5,189 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 92.1% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 5,189 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Carlisle against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Carlisle's 16th national percentile and its 17th percentile inside Pennsylvania, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Carlisle ranks 26,388 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,319 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 1,660 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Carlisle
Carlisle's low wildfire rating (16th 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
Even with 92.1% of Carlisle 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.
Where Carlisle's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Carlisle's 26,388-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Carlisle's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.