Salisbury, MD
How exposed is Salisbury to wildfire?
USFS scores Salisbury at the 65th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 9,594 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Salisbury at the 65th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Salisbury's building exposure, zone by zone
84.2% of Salisbury's 9,594 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 9.6% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 9,594 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Salisbury compares
Compare Salisbury's two percentiles: 90th within Maryland, only 65th nationally — a gap of 25 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Salisbury ranks 11,090 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,697 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 55 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Salisbury's high rating (65th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 84.2% of Salisbury 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.
Where Salisbury's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 9,594 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Salisbury. The exposure-zones guide covers what Salisbury's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.