Knoxville, TN
Knoxville, TN's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Knoxville at the 67th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 73,767 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Knoxville at the 71st national percentile — 4 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
Knoxville rates 65% Minimal exposure against just 28.2% Direct and 6.8% Indirect — of 73,767 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 73,767 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Knoxville ranks
There's little gap between Knoxville's 67th national percentile and its 60th percentile inside Tennessee, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Knoxville ranks 10,411 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 101 by building count (1 is largest). Within Tennessee alone, it ranks 203 of 502 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Tennessee on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Knoxville
At the 67th percentile nationally, Knoxville 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.
Hardening a home in Knoxville
Knoxville's 65% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Knoxville's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 73,767 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Knoxville. The exposure-zones guide covers what Knoxville's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.