Burnside, KY
Burnside, KY's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Burnside at the 68th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 636 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Burnside's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 72nd percentile nationally.
Burnside's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Burnside's buildings (67%) 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.
Where Burnside ranks
Compare Burnside's two percentiles: 84th within Kentucky, only 68th nationally — a gap of 15 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Burnside ranks 9,953 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,392 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kentucky alone, it ranks 91 of 552 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kentucky on its state page.
Burnside and the insurance market
Burnside's 68th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Burnside's 67% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Burnside's 68th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Burnside, see the exposure-zones guide.