Lake Shore, MD
How exposed is Lake Shore to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Lake Shore at the 30th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 7,625 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 Lake Shore at the 29th percentile, close to its 30th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
7,625 buildings are counted in Lake Shore, and 69.3% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 3.7% rated Minimal. At 7,625 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Lake Shore compares
Compare Lake Shore's two percentiles: 46th within Maryland, only 30th nationally — a gap of 17 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lake Shore ranks 22,154 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,240 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 286 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
Lake Shore and the insurance market
Lake Shore's moderate rating (30th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
With 69.3% of Lake Shore in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
Where Lake Shore's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 7,625 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Lake Shore. The exposure-zones guide covers what Lake Shore's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.