Gainesville, TX
How exposed is Gainesville to wildfire?
USFS scores Gainesville at the 87th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 7,796 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Gainesville's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 87th percentile nationally.
Where Gainesville's buildings actually sit
Most of Gainesville's buildings (47%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone. At 7,796 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Gainesville against the rest of the country
Gainesville's risk sits at a similar level relative to Texas (77th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (87th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Gainesville ranks 4,264 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,183 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 417 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Gainesville and the insurance market
Gainesville's very high rating (87th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 47% of Gainesville's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 7,796 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Gainesville. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Gainesville, see the exposure-zones guide.