Ocean Shores, WA
Ocean Shores wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Ocean Shores lands at the 5th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 5,685 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Ocean Shores at the 6th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Ocean Shores's building exposure, zone by zone
Ocean Shores rates 76% Minimal exposure against just 11% Direct and 13.1% Indirect — of 5,685 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 5,685 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Ocean Shores compares
Ocean Shores scores 5th nationally and 2nd within Washington — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ocean Shores ranks 29,834 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,040 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 617 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
Ocean Shores and the insurance market
At the 5th national percentile, Ocean Shores rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
Ocean Shores's 76% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Ocean Shores's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 5,685 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Ocean Shores. The exposure-zones guide covers what Ocean Shores's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.