Brandon, MS
Brandon wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Brandon at the 62nd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 9,779 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Brandon at the 64th percentile, close to its 62nd-percentile risk score.
Brandon's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 60.5% of Brandon's 9,779 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 39.5% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 9,779 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Brandon compares
Brandon's 62nd national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 38th ranking inside Mississippi does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 24 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Brandon ranks 11,944 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,670 by building count (1 is largest). Within Mississippi alone, it ranks 260 of 420 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Mississippi on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 62nd percentile nationally, Brandon carries the 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Brandon (60.5% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Brandon's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Brandon's 11,944-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Brandon's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.