Cairo, MO
Cairo wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Cairo at the 50th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 201 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Cairo at the 52nd percentile, close to its 50th-percentile risk score.
Cairo's building exposure, zone by zone
82.6% of Cairo's 201 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 17.4% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
How Cairo compares
Inside Missouri, Cairo sits at just the 33rd percentile even though it scores 50th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cairo ranks 15,662 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,802 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 708 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Cairo and the insurance market
Cairo's elevated wildfire rating (50th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Cairo (82.6% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Cairo's figures come from
Cairo's 50th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Cairo's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.