Coal Hill, AR
How exposed is Coal Hill to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Coal Hill lands at the 78th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 653 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Coal Hill at the 82nd percentile, close to its 78th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Coal Hill's 653 counted buildings, 74.1% 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.
Coal Hill against the rest of the country
Coal Hill's risk sits at a similar level relative to Arkansas (74th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (78th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Coal Hill ranks 6,925 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,160 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arkansas alone, it ranks 161 of 614 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arkansas on its state page.
Coal Hill and the insurance market
Coal Hill's 78th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Coal Hill's 74.1% 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.
Where Coal Hill's figures come from
Coal Hill's 78th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Coal Hill's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.