Middlesborough, KY
Middlesborough wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Middlesborough lands at the 86th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 5,343 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Middlesborough at the 89th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Middlesborough's building exposure, zone by zone
Indirect exposure is dominant in Middlesborough (69.9% of 5,343 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 30.1% sit in the Direct zone. At 5,343 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Middlesborough compares
There's little gap between Middlesborough's 86th national percentile and its 87th percentile inside Kentucky, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Middlesborough ranks 4,281 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,227 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kentucky alone, it ranks 73 of 552 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kentucky on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Middlesborough's very high rating (86th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Middlesborough's 69.9% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 5,343 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Middlesborough. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Middlesborough, see the exposure-zones guide.