Laurel, MS
Laurel wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Laurel at the 71st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 9,223 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Laurel at the 73rd national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Laurel's buildings actually sit
43.1% of Laurel's 9,223 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 28.7% Direct and 28.2% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone. At 9,223 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Laurel against the rest of the country
Laurel scores 71st nationally and 62nd within Mississippi — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Laurel ranks 9,078 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,789 by building count (1 is largest). Within Mississippi alone, it ranks 163 of 420 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Mississippi on its state page.
Laurel and the insurance market
At the 71st percentile nationally, Laurel 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 Laurel
Because 43.1% of Laurel's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Laurel's 9,078-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Laurel, see the exposure-zones guide.