Oak Ridge, TN
Oak Ridge wildfire risk explained
Oak Ridge sits at the 78th 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 13,823 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Oak Ridge at the 82nd national percentile — 4 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 51.6% of Oak Ridge's 13,823 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 44% Direct and 4.4% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 13,823 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Oak Ridge compares
Oak Ridge scores 78th nationally and 82nd within Tennessee — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Oak Ridge ranks 7,035 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,096 by building count (1 is largest). Within Tennessee alone, it ranks 92 of 502 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Tennessee on its state page.
Oak Ridge and the insurance market
At the 78th percentile nationally, Oak Ridge carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Oak Ridge's 51.6% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Oak Ridge's 7,035-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Oak Ridge, see the exposure-zones guide.