Benham, KY
How exposed is Benham to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Benham lands at the 90th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 363 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Benham at the 92nd national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Benham's buildings actually sit
Most of Benham's buildings (70.8%) 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.
How Benham compares
Benham scores 90th nationally and 91st within Kentucky — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Benham ranks 3,086 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 20,001 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kentucky alone, it ranks 49 of 552 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kentucky on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 90th percentile nationally, Benham carries the very high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
Hardening a home in Benham
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Benham (70.8% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Benham's 3,086-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Benham, see the exposure-zones guide.