Catherine, AL
Catherine wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Catherine lands at the 62nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 73 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Catherine at the 64th percentile, close to its 62nd-percentile risk score.
Catherine's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 100% of Catherine's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 0% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 73 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
Catherine against the rest of the country
Catherine's 62nd national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 31st ranking inside Alabama does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 32 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Catherine ranks 11,869 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,154 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alabama alone, it ranks 411 of 592 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alabama on its state page.
Catherine and the insurance market
Catherine's 62nd-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
Catherine's 100% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Catherine's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Catherine's 11,869-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Catherine's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.