Atlanta, GA
Atlanta wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Atlanta lands at the 52nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 129,730 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Atlanta's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 55th percentile nationally.
Where Atlanta's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 51.1% of Atlanta's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 42.4% Direct and 6.5% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 129,730 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Atlanta ranks
Inside Georgia, Atlanta sits at just the 7th percentile even though it scores 52nd nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Atlanta ranks 15,215 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 46 by building count (1 is largest). Within Georgia alone, it ranks 623 of 669 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Georgia on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Atlanta's elevated wildfire rating (52nd 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Atlanta's 51.1% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Atlanta's 15,215-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Atlanta, see the exposure-zones guide.