Falling Water, TN
Falling Water wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Falling Water at the 78th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 933 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Falling Water at the 81st national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Direct exposure dominates in Falling Water: 87.9% of its 933 buildings, versus 12.1% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Falling Water ranks
Falling Water's risk sits at a similar level relative to Tennessee (83rd percentile statewide) as it does nationally (78th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Falling Water ranks 6,849 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,445 by building count (1 is largest). Within Tennessee alone, it ranks 87 of 502 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Tennessee on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Falling Water's 78th-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
Falling Water's 87.9% 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 Falling Water's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 933 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Falling Water. The exposure-zones guide covers what Falling Water's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.