Creola, AL
How exposed is Creola to wildfire?
USFS scores Creola at the 89th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 1,263 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Creola's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 91st percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Creola's 1,263 counted buildings, 94.4% 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 Creola compares
There's little gap between Creola's 89th national percentile and its 96th percentile inside Alabama, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Creola ranks 3,484 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,275 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alabama alone, it ranks 25 of 592 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alabama on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Creola
Creola's very high rating (89th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
What would actually reduce this score
Creola's 94.4% 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 Creola's figures come from
Creola's 89th-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 Creola's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.