Chatom, AL
Chatom wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Chatom at the 83rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 853 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Chatom at the 85th percentile, close to its 83rd-percentile risk score.
Where Chatom's buildings actually sit
Of Chatom's 853 counted buildings, 84.2% 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.
Chatom against the rest of the country
Chatom's risk sits at a similar level relative to Alabama (84th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (83rd) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Chatom ranks 5,377 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,139 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alabama alone, it ranks 96 of 592 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alabama on its state page.
Chatom and the insurance market
Chatom's 83rd-percentile, very 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
Because Direct exposure dominates in Chatom (84.2%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Chatom's 83rd-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 Chatom, see the exposure-zones guide.