Dewey Beach, DE
How exposed is Dewey Beach to wildfire?
USFS scores Dewey Beach at the 32nd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 796 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 Dewey Beach at the 25th percentile, close to its 32nd-percentile risk score.
Where Dewey Beach's buildings actually sit
Only 0.9% of Dewey Beach's 796 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 99.1% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Dewey Beach against the rest of the country
Dewey Beach scores 32nd nationally and 22nd within Delaware — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Dewey Beach ranks 21,517 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,674 by building count (1 is largest). Within Delaware alone, it ranks 62 of 79 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Delaware on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Dewey Beach
Dewey Beach's moderate wildfire rating (32nd 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
With 99.1% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Dewey Beach gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 796 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Dewey Beach. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Dewey Beach, see the exposure-zones guide.