Mount Vernon, MD
Mount Vernon wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Mount Vernon lands at the 95th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 634 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Mount Vernon at the 93rd national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 88.6% of Mount Vernon's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 5.5% Indirect share and far above its 5.8% Minimal share — a profile where 562 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
How Mount Vernon compares
Mount Vernon's risk sits at a similar level relative to Maryland (98th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (95th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mount Vernon ranks 1,702 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,417 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 10 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
Mount Vernon and the insurance market
Mount Vernon's 95th-percentile, very 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
Mount Vernon's 88.6% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Mount Vernon's 95th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Mount Vernon, see the exposure-zones guide.