Guntown, MS
Guntown wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Guntown lands at the 66th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 1,196 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Guntown's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 70th percentile nationally.
Guntown's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Guntown: 69.7% of its 1,196 buildings, versus 30.4% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Guntown ranks
Guntown's 66th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 47th ranking inside Mississippi does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 20 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Guntown ranks 10,622 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,668 by building count (1 is largest). Within Mississippi alone, it ranks 224 of 420 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Mississippi on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Guntown
Guntown'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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Guntown's 69.7% 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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Guntown's 10,622-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Guntown, see the exposure-zones guide.