Murray, KY
How exposed is Murray to wildfire?
Murray sits at the 33rd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 6,803 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Murray at the 34th percentile, close to its 33rd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
44.3% of Murray's 6,803 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 3,011 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 22.6% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 33.2% are Minimal. At 6,803 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Murray ranks
Within Kentucky, Murray ranks higher (61st percentile) than it does nationally (33rd) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Murray ranks 21,081 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,542 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kentucky alone, it ranks 215 of 552 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kentucky on its state page.
Murray and the insurance market
Murray's moderate wildfire rating (33rd percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Hardening a home in Murray
Because Direct exposure dominates in Murray (44.3%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Murray's 21,081-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Murray, see the exposure-zones guide.