Pretty Bayou, FL
Pretty Bayou wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Pretty Bayou at the 67th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 1,767 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Pretty Bayou's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 65th percentile nationally.
Where Pretty Bayou's buildings actually sit
Pretty Bayou rates 79.5% Minimal exposure against just 20.5% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 1,767 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Where Pretty Bayou ranks
Inside Florida, Pretty Bayou sits at just the 23rd percentile even though it scores 67th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pretty Bayou ranks 10,362 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,162 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 734 of 955 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Florida on its state page.
Pretty Bayou and the insurance market
Pretty Bayou's 67th-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 Pretty Bayou
Even with 79.5% of Pretty Bayou 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.
Where Pretty Bayou's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Pretty Bayou's 10,362-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Pretty Bayou's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.