Black, AL
Black wildfire risk explained
Black's 218 buildings earn a 64th-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.)
Separately from the risk score above, Black's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 64th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Black's 218 counted buildings, 73.4% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Black against the rest of the country
Inside Alabama, Black sits at just the 34th percentile even though it scores 64th 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, Black ranks 11,207 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,181 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alabama alone, it ranks 391 of 592 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alabama on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Black's 64th-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 Direct exposure dominates in Black (73.4%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
Where Black's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Black's 11,207-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Black's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.