Runnelstown, MS
How exposed is Runnelstown to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Runnelstown at the 86th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 274 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Runnelstown at the 89th percentile, close to its 86th-percentile risk score.
Where Runnelstown's buildings actually sit
Of Runnelstown's 274 counted buildings, 90.9% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Where Runnelstown ranks
Runnelstown scores 86th nationally and 90th within Mississippi — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Runnelstown ranks 4,285 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 22,396 by building count (1 is largest). Within Mississippi alone, it ranks 44 of 420 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Mississippi on its state page.
Runnelstown and the insurance market
Runnelstown's 86th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Runnelstown's 90.9% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Runnelstown's 4,285-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Runnelstown, see the exposure-zones guide.