Gapland, MD
How exposed is Gapland to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Gapland lands at the 61st percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 73 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Gapland at the 59th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Gapland's buildings actually sit
100% of Gapland's 73 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 73 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 0% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0% are Minimal.
Gapland against the rest of the country
Compare Gapland's two percentiles: 87th within Maryland, only 61st nationally — a gap of 26 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Gapland ranks 12,447 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,173 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 70 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
Gapland and the insurance market
Gapland's 61st-percentile, 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
Gapland's 100% 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 73 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Gapland. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Gapland, see the exposure-zones guide.