Chattanooga, TN
Chattanooga wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Chattanooga lands at the 72nd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 71,042 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Chattanooga at the 75th national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Chattanooga's building exposure, zone by zone
Chattanooga rates 48.6% Minimal exposure against just 34.3% Direct and 17.1% Indirect — of 71,042 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 71,042 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Chattanooga against the rest of the country
Chattanooga scores 72nd nationally and 70th within Tennessee — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Chattanooga ranks 8,930 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 111 by building count (1 is largest). Within Tennessee alone, it ranks 154 of 502 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Tennessee on its state page.
Chattanooga and the insurance market
Chattanooga's high rating (72nd percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
What would actually reduce this score
Chattanooga's 48.6% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 71,042 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Chattanooga. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Chattanooga, see the exposure-zones guide.