Axis, AL
How exposed is Axis to wildfire?
USFS scores Axis at the 90th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 441 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Axis at the 91st national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Axis's building exposure, zone by zone
441 buildings are counted in Axis, and 80.5% 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% rated Minimal.
Axis against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Axis's 90th national percentile and its 97th percentile inside Alabama, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Axis ranks 3,295 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,429 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alabama alone, it ranks 18 of 592 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alabama on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Axis
Axis's 90th-percentile, very high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
With 80.5% of Axis in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
Where Axis's figures come from
Axis's 90th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Axis's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.