Dalton, GA
Dalton wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Dalton at the 65th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 9,761 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Dalton at the 68th percentile, close to its 65th-percentile risk score.
Dalton's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 22.3% of Dalton's 9,761 buildings carry Direct exposure and 29.7% carry Indirect; the remaining 48% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 9,761 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Dalton ranks
Dalton ranks lower within Georgia (43rd percentile statewide) than its 65th national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Dalton ranks 10,961 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,673 by building count (1 is largest). Within Georgia alone, it ranks 383 of 669 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Georgia on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Dalton
Dalton's 65th-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
Even with 48% of Dalton outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Dalton's 65th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Dalton, see the exposure-zones guide.