Cool, TX
Cool, TX's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Cool at the 95th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 228 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Cool at the 94th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Cool's buildings actually sit
Direct exposure dominates in Cool: 87.3% of its 228 buildings, versus 12.7% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Cool against the rest of the country
Cool scores 95th nationally and 95th within Texas — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cool ranks 1,648 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 23,873 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 96 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Cool's 95th-percentile, very 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
With 87.3% of Cool in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Cool's 1,648-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Cool, see the exposure-zones guide.