Pell City, AL
Pell City, AL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Pell City's 6,543 buildings earn a 80th-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.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Pell City at the 83rd percentile, close to its 80th-percentile risk score.
Where Pell City's buildings actually sit
6,543 buildings are counted in Pell City, and 66.9% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 3.1% rated Minimal. At 6,543 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Pell City ranks
There's little gap between Pell City's 80th national percentile and its 74th percentile inside Alabama, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pell City ranks 6,385 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,652 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alabama alone, it ranks 156 of 592 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alabama on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Pell City
Pell City's high rating (80th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Hardening a home in Pell City
Because Direct exposure dominates in Pell City (66.9%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
Where Pell City's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Pell City's 6,385-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Pell City's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.