Owensboro, KY
How exposed is Owensboro to wildfire?
Owensboro sits at the 19th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 25,626 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 Owensboro at the 20th percentile, close to its 19th-percentile risk score.
Where Owensboro's buildings actually sit
Only 11.7% of Owensboro's 25,626 buildings carry Direct exposure and 5.8% carry Indirect; the remaining 82.5% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 25,626 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Owensboro compares
Owensboro's risk sits at a similar level relative to Kentucky (31st percentile statewide) as it does nationally (19th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Owensboro ranks 25,560 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 490 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kentucky alone, it ranks 379 of 552 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kentucky on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Owensboro
At the 19th national percentile, Owensboro rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 82.5% of Owensboro outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Owensboro's 19th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Owensboro, see the exposure-zones guide.