Marco Island, FL
How exposed is Marco Island to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Marco Island at the 80th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 8,646 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Marco Island's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 82nd percentile nationally.
Marco Island's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Marco Island's buildings (87.8% of 8,646) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 8,646 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Marco Island against the rest of the country
Inside Florida, Marco Island sits at just the 47th percentile even though it scores 80th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Marco Island ranks 6,395 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,925 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 504 of 955 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Florida on its state page.
Marco Island and the insurance market
Marco Island's 80th-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
With 87.8% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Marco Island gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Marco Island's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Marco Island's 6,395-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Marco Island's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.