Franklin, KY
How exposed is Franklin to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Franklin lands at the 12th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 5,221 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Franklin at the 13th percentile, close to its 12th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
48.4% of Franklin's 5,221 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 21.7% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 5,221 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Franklin against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Franklin's 12th national percentile and its 18th percentile inside Kentucky, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Franklin ranks 27,763 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,301 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kentucky alone, it ranks 456 of 552 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kentucky on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Franklin's low wildfire rating (12th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 48.4% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Franklin gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Franklin's figures come from
Franklin's 12th-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 Franklin's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.