Mount Carmel, TN
How exposed is Mount Carmel to wildfire?
USFS scores Mount Carmel at the 74th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 2,984 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Mount Carmel at the 78th percentile, close to its 74th-percentile risk score.
Where Mount Carmel's buildings actually sit
Direct exposure dominates in Mount Carmel: 68.7% of its 2,984 buildings, versus 31.3% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Mount Carmel against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Mount Carmel's 74th national percentile and its 73rd percentile inside Tennessee, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mount Carmel ranks 8,301 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,462 by building count (1 is largest). Within Tennessee alone, it ranks 136 of 502 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Tennessee on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Mount Carmel's 74th-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.
Hardening a home in Mount Carmel
With 68.7% of Mount Carmel in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
Where Mount Carmel's figures come from
Mount Carmel's 74th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Mount Carmel's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.