Big Sandy, TX
Big Sandy wildfire risk explained
Big Sandy's 670 buildings earn a 69th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Big Sandy at the 70th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Big Sandy's buildings actually sit
Most of Big Sandy's buildings (80.9%) 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.
Big Sandy against the rest of the country
Big Sandy's 69th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 29th ranking inside Texas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 40 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Big Sandy ranks 9,753 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 14,970 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,275 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Big Sandy and the insurance market
Big Sandy's high rating (69th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Big Sandy's 80.9% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Big Sandy's 9,753-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Big Sandy, see the exposure-zones guide.