South Laurel, MD
South Laurel wildfire risk explained
South Laurel's 5,460 buildings earn a 35th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks South Laurel at the 35th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
South Laurel's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 27.3% of South Laurel's 5,460 buildings carry Direct exposure and 31.1% carry Indirect; the remaining 41.6% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 5,460 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How South Laurel compares
Within Maryland, South Laurel ranks higher (53rd percentile) than it does nationally (35th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, South Laurel ranks 20,388 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,165 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 246 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in South Laurel
South Laurel's moderate wildfire rating (35th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
What would actually reduce this score
With 41.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, South Laurel gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where South Laurel's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind South Laurel's 20,388-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what South Laurel's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.