Lynch, KY
Lynch wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Lynch at the 91st national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 454 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lynch at the 93rd national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Lynch's buildings actually sit
56.2% of Lynch's 454 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 43.8% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
Lynch against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Lynch's 91st national percentile and its 92nd percentile inside Kentucky, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lynch ranks 2,991 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,188 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kentucky alone, it ranks 44 of 552 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kentucky on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Lynch
Lynch's 91st-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Lynch (56.2% 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 454 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Lynch. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Lynch, see the exposure-zones guide.