Carterville, MO
Carterville wildfire risk explained
Carterville sits at the 66th 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 1,202 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Carterville at the 67th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Carterville's buildings actually sit
Most of Carterville's buildings (77% of 1,202) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure.
Carterville against the rest of the country
Carterville's risk sits at a similar level relative to Missouri (73rd percentile statewide) as it does nationally (66th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Carterville ranks 10,592 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,638 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 288 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Carterville
Carterville's 66th-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 77% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Carterville gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Carterville's 10,592-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Carterville, see the exposure-zones guide.