Heidelberg, MS
How exposed is Heidelberg to wildfire?
USFS scores Heidelberg at the 71st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 634 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Heidelberg at the 73rd percentile, close to its 71st-percentile risk score.
Where Heidelberg's buildings actually sit
72.2% of Heidelberg's 634 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 458 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 27.8% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0% are Minimal.
How Heidelberg compares
There's little gap between Heidelberg's 71st national percentile and its 62nd percentile inside Mississippi, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Heidelberg ranks 9,052 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,419 by building count (1 is largest). Within Mississippi alone, it ranks 159 of 420 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Mississippi on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Heidelberg's 71st-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
Because Direct exposure dominates in Heidelberg (72.2%), 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Heidelberg's 9,052-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Heidelberg, see the exposure-zones guide.