Ocean Springs, MS
Ocean Springs wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Ocean Springs at the 94th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 9,322 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Ocean Springs at the 94th percentile, close to its 94th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
9,322 buildings are counted in Ocean Springs, and 42.6% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 26.1% in Direct exposure or the 31.3% rated Minimal. At 9,322 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Ocean Springs compares
Ocean Springs's risk sits at a similar level relative to Mississippi (96th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (94th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ocean Springs ranks 2,014 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,764 by building count (1 is largest). Within Mississippi alone, it ranks 16 of 420 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Mississippi on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 94th percentile nationally, Ocean Springs carries the very 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 42.6% of Ocean Springs'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 Ocean Springs's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Ocean Springs's 2,014-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Ocean Springs's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.