Charleston, MS
Charleston wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Charleston at the 71st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 992 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Charleston at the 73rd national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Charleston's building exposure, zone by zone
Indirect exposure is dominant in Charleston (79.8% of 992 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 20.2% sit in the Direct zone.
How Charleston compares
Charleston's risk sits at a similar level relative to Mississippi (60th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (71st) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Charleston ranks 9,299 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,994 by building count (1 is largest). Within Mississippi alone, it ranks 169 of 420 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Mississippi on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Charleston's 71st-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.
Hardening a home in Charleston
Charleston's 79.8% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Charleston's 9,299-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Charleston, see the exposure-zones guide.