Chalmette, LA
How exposed is Chalmette to wildfire?
USFS scores Chalmette at the 56th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 8,891 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Chalmette at the 46th percentile, lower than its 56th-percentile risk score, because so much is actually built here.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
95.4% of Chalmette's 8,891 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 0.5% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 8,891 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Chalmette ranks
Chalmette scores 56th nationally and 67th within Louisiana — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Chalmette ranks 13,929 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,869 by building count (1 is largest). Within Louisiana alone, it ranks 159 of 488 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Louisiana on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 56th national percentile, Chalmette rates elevated 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
Chalmette's 95.4% 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.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 8,891 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Chalmette. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Chalmette, see the exposure-zones guide.