Cleveland, AL
Cleveland wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Cleveland at the 76th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 963 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 Cleveland at the 80th percentile, close to its 76th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Cleveland's 963 counted buildings, 80.8% 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.
How Cleveland compares
Cleveland's risk sits at a similar level relative to Alabama (63rd percentile statewide) as it does nationally (76th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cleveland ranks 7,551 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,200 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alabama alone, it ranks 220 of 592 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alabama on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 76th percentile nationally, Cleveland carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Cleveland's 80.8% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Cleveland's 7,551-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Cleveland, see the exposure-zones guide.