Columbus, MS
How exposed is Columbus to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Columbus at the 53rd national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 11,499 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Columbus at the 56th percentile, close to its 53rd-percentile risk score.
Columbus's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 41.7% of Columbus's 11,499 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 26.2% Direct and 32.2% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 11,499 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Columbus ranks
Columbus's 53rd national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 22nd ranking inside Mississippi does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 32 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Columbus ranks 14,751 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,370 by building count (1 is largest). Within Mississippi alone, it ranks 329 of 420 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Mississippi on its state page.
Columbus and the insurance market
Columbus's elevated wildfire rating (53rd 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.
Hardening a home in Columbus
Columbus's 41.7% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
Where Columbus's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Columbus's 14,751-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Columbus's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.