Eldersburg, MD
Eldersburg wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Eldersburg at the 17th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 11,626 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Eldersburg at the 14th percentile, close to its 17th-percentile risk score.
Eldersburg's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 75.5% of Eldersburg's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 24.5% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 8,772 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most. At 11,626 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Eldersburg ranks
There's little gap between Eldersburg's 17th national percentile and its 17th percentile inside Maryland, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Eldersburg ranks 26,283 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,351 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 435 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Eldersburg
Eldersburg's low rating (17th 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
Eldersburg's 75.5% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Eldersburg's 17th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Eldersburg, see the exposure-zones guide.