Ocean City, FL
How exposed is Ocean City to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Ocean City at the 67th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 2,650 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Ocean City's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 68th percentile nationally.
Where Ocean City's buildings actually sit
Only 10.8% of Ocean City's 2,650 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 89.2% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Ocean City against the rest of the country
Ocean City's 67th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 23rd ranking inside Florida does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 44 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ocean City ranks 10,425 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,021 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 737 of 955 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Florida on its state page.
Ocean City and the insurance market
Ocean City's 67th-percentile, 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 89.2% of Ocean City 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 Ocean City's 10,425-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Ocean City, see the exposure-zones guide.