Columbia, KY
Columbia wildfire risk explained
Columbia's 2,397 buildings earn a 39th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Columbia at the 42nd percentile, close to its 39th-percentile risk score.
Columbia's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 51.7% of Columbia's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 31.5% Indirect share and far above its 16.8% Minimal share — a profile where 1,239 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
How Columbia compares
Within Kentucky, Columbia ranks higher (66th percentile) than it does nationally (39th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Columbia ranks 19,375 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,521 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kentucky alone, it ranks 186 of 552 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kentucky on its state page.
Columbia and the insurance market
Columbia's moderate wildfire rating (39th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Columbia's 51.7% 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 Columbia's 19,375-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Columbia, see the exposure-zones guide.