Mount Airy, MD
How exposed is Mount Airy to wildfire?
Mount Airy's 3,316 buildings earn a 17th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Mount Airy's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 15th percentile nationally.
Where Mount Airy's buildings actually sit
Most of Mount Airy's buildings (54.4%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
How Mount Airy compares
Mount Airy scores 17th nationally and 18th within Maryland — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mount Airy ranks 26,186 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,023 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 431 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Mount Airy's low wildfire rating (17th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
What would actually reduce this score
Mount Airy's 54.4% 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 Mount Airy's 26,186-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Mount Airy, see the exposure-zones guide.