Mount Vernon, MO
Mount Vernon, MO's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Mount Vernon sits at the 63rd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 2,294 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Mount Vernon's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 65th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 57.7% of Mount Vernon's 2,294 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 16.4% Direct and 25.9% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Mount Vernon against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Mount Vernon's 63rd national percentile and its 64th percentile inside Missouri, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mount Vernon ranks 11,570 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,710 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 379 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Mount Vernon's 63rd-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 Vernon
Because 57.7% of Mount Vernon'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 Mount Vernon's figures come from
Mount Vernon's 63rd-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 Vernon's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.