Richmond, KY
Richmond, KY's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Richmond at the 54th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 10,695 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Richmond at the 58th percentile, close to its 54th-percentile risk score.
Richmond's building exposure, zone by zone
71.3% of Richmond's 10,695 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 10.3% Direct and 18.4% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone. At 10,695 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Richmond against the rest of the country
Within Kentucky, Richmond ranks higher (80th percentile) than it does nationally (54th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Richmond ranks 14,370 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,484 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kentucky alone, it ranks 111 of 552 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kentucky on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Richmond's elevated wildfire rating (54th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 71.3% of Richmond's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Richmond's 14,370-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Richmond, see the exposure-zones guide.