Carmel, IN
How exposed is Carmel to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Carmel lands at the 14th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 33,456 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 Carmel at the 15th percentile, close to its 14th-percentile risk score.
Carmel's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 81.5% of Carmel's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 18.5% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 33,456 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Carmel against the rest of the country
Within Indiana, Carmel ranks higher (65th percentile) than it does nationally (14th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Carmel ranks 27,256 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 327 by building count (1 is largest). Within Indiana alone, it ranks 340 of 967 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Indiana on its state page.
Carmel and the insurance market
Carmel's low rating (14th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Carmel's 81.5% 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 Carmel's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 33,456 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Carmel. The exposure-zones guide covers what Carmel's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.