Bristol, TN
Bristol wildfire risk explained
Bristol sits at the 63rd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 12,611 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Bristol's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 68th percentile nationally.
Where Bristol's buildings actually sit
Most of Bristol's buildings (60%) 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. At 12,611 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Bristol against the rest of the country
Bristol's risk sits at a similar level relative to Tennessee (56th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (63rd) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bristol ranks 11,580 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,216 by building count (1 is largest). Within Tennessee alone, it ranks 224 of 502 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Tennessee on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Bristol's 63rd-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 60% of Bristol's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Bristol's 11,580-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Bristol, see the exposure-zones guide.