Fort Washington, MD
Fort Washington wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Fort Washington lands at the 36th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 9,569 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Fort Washington at the 35th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Fort Washington's buildings actually sit
Of Fort Washington's 9,569 counted buildings, 48.9% carry Direct exposure and only 29.4% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first. At 9,569 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Fort Washington compares
Within Maryland, Fort Washington ranks higher (55th percentile) than it does nationally (36th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Fort Washington ranks 20,068 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,701 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 238 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
Fort Washington and the insurance market
Fort Washington's moderate wildfire rating (36th 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
Because Direct exposure dominates in Fort Washington (48.9%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
Where Fort Washington's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Fort Washington's 20,068-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Fort Washington's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.