Ballinger, TX
How exposed is Ballinger to wildfire?
USFS scores Ballinger at the 79th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 2,666 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Ballinger at the 77th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Ballinger's buildings (89.8%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Ballinger against the rest of the country
Ballinger's 79th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 59th ranking inside Texas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 20 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ballinger ranks 6,536 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,989 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 731 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Ballinger's 79th-percentile, 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 89.8% of Ballinger's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Ballinger's 79th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Ballinger, see the exposure-zones guide.