Gardendale, TX
Gardendale wildfire risk explained
Gardendale's 1,976 buildings earn a 80th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Gardendale at the 87th percentile, close to its 80th-percentile risk score.
Where Gardendale's buildings actually sit
Of Gardendale's 1,976 counted buildings, 99.8% 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.
How Gardendale compares
Gardendale's 80th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 62nd ranking inside Texas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 19 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Gardendale ranks 6,220 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,546 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 683 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
Gardendale's very high rating (80th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because Direct exposure dominates in Gardendale (99.8%), 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
Gardendale's 80th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Gardendale, see the exposure-zones guide.