Carmel, NY
Carmel, NY's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Carmel at the 37th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 2,572 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Carmel at the 36th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Carmel's buildings actually sit
Of Carmel's 2,572 counted buildings, 68.2% carry Direct exposure and only 10.8% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Carmel compares
Within New York, Carmel ranks higher (80th percentile) than it does nationally (37th) — 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 19,825 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,154 by building count (1 is largest). Within New York alone, it ranks 258 of 1,289 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New York on its state page.
Carmel and the insurance market
Carmel's moderate wildfire rating (37th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 68.2% of Carmel in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Carmel's 19,825-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Carmel, see the exposure-zones guide.