Old Orchard Beach, ME
How exposed is Old Orchard Beach to wildfire?
Old Orchard Beach's 5,734 buildings earn a 16th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Old Orchard Beach's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 16th percentile nationally.
Where Old Orchard Beach's buildings actually sit
Most of Old Orchard Beach's buildings (40.7% of 5,734) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 5,734 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Old Orchard Beach ranks
Within Maine, Old Orchard Beach ranks higher (74th percentile) than it does nationally (16th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Old Orchard Beach ranks 26,628 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,014 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maine alone, it ranks 42 of 155 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maine on its state page.
Old Orchard Beach and the insurance market
Old Orchard Beach's low rating (16th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 40.7% of Old Orchard Beach 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 Old Orchard Beach's 26,628-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Old Orchard Beach, see the exposure-zones guide.