Fishing Creek, MD
Fishing Creek, MD's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Fishing Creek lands at the 91st percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 208 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Fishing Creek at the 88th percentile, close to its 91st-percentile risk score.
Where Fishing Creek's buildings actually sit
208 buildings are counted in Fishing Creek, and 67.3% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 21.2% rated Minimal.
Fishing Creek against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Fishing Creek's 91st national percentile and its 97th percentile inside Maryland, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Fishing Creek ranks 2,735 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,554 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 15 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
Fishing Creek and the insurance market
Fishing Creek's 91st-percentile, very high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because Direct exposure dominates in Fishing Creek (67.3%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
Where Fishing Creek's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Fishing Creek's 2,735-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Fishing Creek's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.