Cabool, MO
Cabool wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Cabool lands at the 73rd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 1,309 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Cabool at the 75th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Cabool's buildings (56.7%) 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 Cabool ranks
Cabool's 88th-percentile standing inside Missouri outpaces its 73rd national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cabool ranks 8,474 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,030 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 126 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Cabool and the insurance market
Cabool's 73rd-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
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Cabool (56.7% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,309 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Cabool. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Cabool, see the exposure-zones guide.