Sanford, ME
Sanford, ME's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Sanford sits at the 23rd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 10,244 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Sanford at the 21st percentile, close to its 23rd-percentile risk score.
Where Sanford's buildings actually sit
10,244 buildings are counted in Sanford, and 50.5% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0.2% rated Minimal. At 10,244 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Sanford against the rest of the country
Within Maine, Sanford ranks higher (90th percentile) than it does nationally (23rd) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sanford ranks 24,424 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,565 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maine alone, it ranks 17 of 155 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maine on its state page.
Sanford and the insurance market
At the 23rd national percentile, Sanford rates moderate 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
Sanford's 50.5% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Sanford's 24,424-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Sanford, see the exposure-zones guide.