Denison, TX
Denison wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Denison at the 72nd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 12,274 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 Denison at the 72nd percentile, close to its 72nd-percentile risk score.
Where Denison's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 44% of Denison's 12,274 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 42.4% Direct and 13.6% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 12,274 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Denison against the rest of the country
Denison's 72nd national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 36th ranking inside Texas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 36 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Denison ranks 8,869 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,261 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,144 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
Denison's 72nd-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Denison's 44% 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 Denison's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 12,274 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Denison. The exposure-zones guide covers what Denison's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.