Gordon, AL
How exposed is Gordon to wildfire?
Gordon sits at the 66th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 227 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Gordon at the 68th percentile, close to its 66th-percentile risk score.
Gordon's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 93.4% of Gordon's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 6.6% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 212 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
How Gordon compares
Gordon's 66th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 38th ranking inside Alabama does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 29 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Gordon ranks 10,671 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 23,878 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alabama alone, it ranks 370 of 592 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alabama on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Gordon
Gordon's 66th-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.
Hardening a home in Gordon
Gordon's 93.4% 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 Gordon's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 227 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Gordon. The exposure-zones guide covers what Gordon's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.