Dover, DE
How exposed is Dover to wildfire?
USFS scores Dover at the 46th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 11,934 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 Dover at the 44th percentile, close to its 46th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Dover rates 80% Minimal exposure against just 19.7% Direct and 0.4% Indirect — of 11,934 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 11,934 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Dover compares
Dover's 71st-percentile standing inside Delaware outpaces its 46th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Dover ranks 17,168 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,307 by building count (1 is largest). Within Delaware alone, it ranks 24 of 79 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Delaware on its state page.
Dover and the insurance market
Dover's elevated rating (46th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Dover
Even with 80% of Dover 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.
More on how this number was built
Dover's 46th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Dover, see the exposure-zones guide.