Pascagoula, MS
How exposed is Pascagoula to wildfire?
USFS scores Pascagoula at the 94th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 10,786 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Pascagoula's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 92nd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 85.3% of Pascagoula's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 12.6% Direct and 2.2% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 10,786 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Pascagoula against the rest of the country
Pascagoula's risk sits at a similar level relative to Mississippi (97th 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, Pascagoula ranks 1,986 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,470 by building count (1 is largest). Within Mississippi alone, it ranks 15 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
Pascagoula's 94th-percentile, very 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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 85.3% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Pascagoula gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Pascagoula's figures come from
Pascagoula's 94th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Pascagoula's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.