New Orleans, LA
How exposed is New Orleans to wildfire?
New Orleans sits at the 77th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 142,889 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, New Orleans's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 63rd percentile nationally.
Where New Orleans's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 92.3% of New Orleans's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 1.5% Direct and 6.2% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 142,889 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
New Orleans against the rest of the country
There's little gap between New Orleans's 77th national percentile and its 90th percentile inside Louisiana, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, New Orleans ranks 7,407 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 41 by building count (1 is largest). Within Louisiana alone, it ranks 49 of 488 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Louisiana on its state page.
New Orleans and the insurance market
At the 77th percentile nationally, New Orleans carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
What would actually reduce this score
With 92.3% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, New Orleans gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind New Orleans's 7,407-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 Orleans, see the exposure-zones guide.