Blackey, KY
How exposed is Blackey to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Blackey lands at the 92nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 84 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Blackey at the 95th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Blackey's building exposure, zone by zone
84 buildings are counted in Blackey, and 64.3% 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.
How Blackey compares
Blackey scores 92nd nationally and 95th 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, Blackey ranks 2,418 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,729 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kentucky alone, it ranks 28 of 552 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kentucky on its state page.
Blackey and the insurance market
Blackey's 92nd-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.
Hardening a home in Blackey
Blackey's 64.3% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Blackey's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Blackey's 2,418-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Blackey's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.