Kensington, MD
Kensington, MD's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Kensington at the 7th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 833 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 Kensington at the 7th percentile, close to its 7th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 23.8% of Kensington's 833 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 76.2% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
How Kensington compares
There's little gap between Kensington's 7th national percentile and its 2nd percentile inside Maryland, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Kensington ranks 29,223 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,316 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 519 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
Kensington and the insurance market
At the 7th national percentile, Kensington rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Kensington's 76.2% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 833 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Kensington. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Kensington, see the exposure-zones guide.