Hazel, KY
Hazel wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Hazel at the 25th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 295 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Hazel at the 26th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Hazel's 295 counted buildings, 70.2% 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.
Where Hazel ranks
Hazel's 47th-percentile standing inside Kentucky outpaces its 25th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Hazel ranks 23,665 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,756 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kentucky alone, it ranks 294 of 552 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kentucky on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Hazel
Hazel's moderate wildfire rating (25th 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.
Hardening a home in Hazel
Because Direct exposure dominates in Hazel (70.2%), 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
Hazel's 25th-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 Hazel, see the exposure-zones guide.