Echols County, GA
Echols County, GA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Echols County lands at the 77th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 2,683 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Echols County's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 77th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Echols County's 2,683 counted buildings, 87.8% 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.
Echols County against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Echols County's 77th national percentile and its 86th percentile inside Georgia, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Echols County ranks 7,245 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,959 by building count (1 is largest). Within Georgia alone, it ranks 96 of 669 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Georgia on its state page.
Echols County and the insurance market
Echols County's 77th-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
Because Direct exposure dominates in Echols County (87.8%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 2,683 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Echols County. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Echols County, see the exposure-zones guide.