Karns, TN
Karns wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Karns at the 69th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 1,855 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Karns at the 74th national percentile — 5 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Karns's building exposure, zone by zone
42.3% of Karns's 1,855 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 31.9% Direct and 25.8% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
How Karns compares
Karns's risk sits at a similar level relative to Tennessee (64th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (69th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Karns ranks 9,717 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,898 by building count (1 is largest). Within Tennessee alone, it ranks 181 of 502 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Tennessee on its state page.
Karns and the insurance market
At the 69th percentile nationally, Karns carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Karns (42.3% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Karns's 69th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Karns, see the exposure-zones guide.