Hillcrest Heights, MD
Hillcrest Heights wildfire risk explained
Hillcrest Heights's 3,875 buildings earn a 26th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Hillcrest Heights's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 26th percentile nationally.
Hillcrest Heights's building exposure, zone by zone
93.7% of Hillcrest Heights's 3,875 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 6.4% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
How Hillcrest Heights compares
Hillcrest Heights's risk sits at a similar level relative to Maryland (38th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (26th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Hillcrest Heights ranks 23,318 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,360 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 330 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
Hillcrest Heights and the insurance market
Hillcrest Heights's moderate wildfire rating (26th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 93.7% of Hillcrest Heights 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Hillcrest Heights's 23,318-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Hillcrest Heights, see the exposure-zones guide.