Chattanooga, OK
Chattanooga wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Chattanooga at the 73rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 368 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Chattanooga's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 69th percentile nationally.
Where Chattanooga's buildings actually sit
Most of Chattanooga's buildings (92.7% of 368) 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.
How Chattanooga compares
Inside Oklahoma, Chattanooga sits at just the 13th percentile even though it scores 73rd nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Chattanooga ranks 8,418 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 19,913 by building count (1 is largest). Within Oklahoma alone, it ranks 728 of 834 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Oklahoma on its state page.
Chattanooga and the insurance market
Chattanooga's 73rd-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 92.7% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Chattanooga 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 368 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Chattanooga. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Chattanooga, see the exposure-zones guide.