Central, TN
How exposed is Central to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Central lands at the 62nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 1,488 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 Central at the 66th percentile, close to its 62nd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Central's 1,488 counted buildings, 80.2% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Where Central ranks
There's little gap between Central's 62nd national percentile and its 54th percentile inside Tennessee, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Central ranks 12,078 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,217 by building count (1 is largest). Within Tennessee alone, it ranks 233 of 502 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Tennessee on its state page.
Central and the insurance market
Central'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
With 80.2% of Central in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Central's 62nd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Central, see the exposure-zones guide.