New Castle, DE
New Castle wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts New Castle at the 43rd national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 1,909 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 New Castle at the 42nd percentile, close to its 43rd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
92.8% of New Castle's 1,909 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 7.2% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
New Castle against the rest of the country
Compare New Castle's two percentiles: 62nd within Delaware, only 43rd nationally — a gap of 19 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, New Castle ranks 18,018 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,735 by building count (1 is largest). Within Delaware alone, it ranks 32 of 79 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Delaware on its state page.
New Castle and the insurance market
New Castle's elevated wildfire rating (43rd 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.
Hardening a home in New Castle
Even with 92.8% of New Castle outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind New Castle's 18,018-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond New Castle, see the exposure-zones guide.