Pelham, TN
Pelham wildfire risk explained
Pelham sits at the 71st 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 431 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Pelham's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 74th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 84.9% of Pelham's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 15.1% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 366 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
Pelham against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Pelham's 71st national percentile and its 67th percentile inside Tennessee, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pelham ranks 9,309 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,636 by building count (1 is largest). Within Tennessee alone, it ranks 168 of 502 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Tennessee on its state page.
Pelham and the insurance market
Pelham's 71st-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 84.9% of Pelham in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Pelham's 9,309-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Pelham, see the exposure-zones guide.