Mays Chapel, MD
Mays Chapel, MD's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Mays Chapel sits at the 11th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 3,015 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Mays Chapel at the 10th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Mays Chapel's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 52.4% of Mays Chapel's 3,015 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 47.6% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Mays Chapel compares
There's little gap between Mays Chapel's 11th national percentile and its 6th percentile inside Maryland, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mays Chapel ranks 28,113 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,409 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 496 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
Mays Chapel and the insurance market
At the 11th national percentile, Mays Chapel rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
Mays Chapel's 52.4% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Mays Chapel's 28,113-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Mays Chapel, see the exposure-zones guide.