Olive Branch, MS
Olive Branch wildfire risk explained
Olive Branch's 19,840 buildings earn a 70th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Olive Branch's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 73rd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Olive Branch rates 36% Minimal exposure against just 35.1% Direct and 28.9% Indirect — of 19,840 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 19,840 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Olive Branch compares
Olive Branch's risk sits at a similar level relative to Mississippi (58th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (70th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Olive Branch ranks 9,423 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 713 by building count (1 is largest). Within Mississippi alone, it ranks 178 of 420 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Mississippi on its state page.
Olive Branch and the insurance market
Olive Branch's 70th-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 Olive Branch
With 36% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Olive Branch gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Olive Branch's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Olive Branch's 9,423-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Olive Branch's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.