Jekyll Island, GA
Jekyll Island, GA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Jekyll Island at the 90th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 793 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Jekyll Island at the 83rd national percentile — 7 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Jekyll Island's 793 counted buildings, 70.5% carry Direct exposure and only 0.6% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Jekyll Island against the rest of the country
Jekyll Island's risk sits at a similar level relative to Georgia (99th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (90th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Jekyll Island ranks 3,026 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,698 by building count (1 is largest). Within Georgia alone, it ranks 8 of 669 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Georgia on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Jekyll Island
Jekyll Island's 90th-percentile, very 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Jekyll Island's 70.5% 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 Jekyll Island's figures come from
Jekyll Island's 90th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Jekyll Island's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.