Memphis, MO
Memphis wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Memphis at the 60th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 1,469 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Memphis at the 62nd percentile, close to its 60th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Memphis's buildings (63.7%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Where Memphis ranks
Memphis scores 60th nationally and 56th within Missouri — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Memphis ranks 12,546 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,315 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 466 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Memphis and the insurance market
Memphis's 60th-percentile, 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
Because 63.7% of Memphis'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.
Where Memphis's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,469 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Memphis. The exposure-zones guide covers what Memphis's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.