Sale Creek, TN
Sale Creek wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Sale Creek lands at the 79th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 2,177 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Sale Creek at the 83rd percentile, close to its 79th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
2,177 buildings are counted in Sale Creek, and 92.3% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0.2% rated Minimal.
Sale Creek against the rest of the country
Sale Creek scores 79th nationally and 85th within Tennessee — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sale Creek ranks 6,534 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,000 by building count (1 is largest). Within Tennessee alone, it ranks 75 of 502 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Tennessee on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Sale Creek's 79th-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 92.3% of Sale Creek 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.
Where Sale Creek's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 2,177 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Sale Creek. The exposure-zones guide covers what Sale Creek's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.