Silver Spring, MD
How exposed is Silver Spring to wildfire?
Silver Spring sits at the 16th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 12,450 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Silver Spring at the 16th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Silver Spring's building exposure, zone by zone
74.4% of Silver Spring's 12,450 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 25.6% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 12,450 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Silver Spring against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Silver Spring's 16th national percentile and its 17th percentile inside Maryland, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Silver Spring ranks 26,441 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,240 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 437 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
Silver Spring'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.
Hardening a home in Silver Spring
Even with 74.4% of Silver Spring 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 12,450 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Silver Spring. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Silver Spring, see the exposure-zones guide.