Brookhaven, MS
Brookhaven wildfire risk explained
Brookhaven sits at the 80th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 6,558 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Brookhaven at the 83rd percentile, close to its 80th-percentile risk score.
Where Brookhaven's buildings actually sit
52.9% of Brookhaven's 6,558 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 43.4% Direct and 3.8% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone. At 6,558 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Brookhaven against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Brookhaven's 80th national percentile and its 81st percentile inside Mississippi, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Brookhaven ranks 6,239 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,645 by building count (1 is largest). Within Mississippi alone, it ranks 81 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
Brookhaven's very high rating (80th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 52.9% of Brookhaven'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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 6,558 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Brookhaven. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Brookhaven, see the exposure-zones guide.