Mary Esther, FL
How exposed is Mary Esther to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Mary Esther at the 66th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 1,832 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 Mary Esther at the 64th percentile, close to its 66th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 9% of Mary Esther's 1,832 buildings carry Direct exposure and 26.1% carry Indirect; the remaining 65% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Where Mary Esther ranks
Mary Esther's 66th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 22nd ranking inside Florida does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 44 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mary Esther ranks 10,642 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,974 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 748 of 955 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Florida on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Mary Esther's 66th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 65% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Mary Esther gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Mary Esther's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Mary Esther's 10,642-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Mary Esther's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.