Southaven, MS
Southaven wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Southaven at the 65th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 22,277 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Southaven at the 67th national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Southaven's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 49.5% of Southaven's 22,277 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 34.9% Direct and 15.6% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 22,277 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Southaven compares
Southaven's 65th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 44th ranking inside Mississippi does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 21 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Southaven ranks 11,161 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 608 by building count (1 is largest). Within Mississippi alone, it ranks 236 of 420 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Mississippi on its state page.
Southaven and the insurance market
At the 65th percentile nationally, Southaven carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 49.5% of Southaven'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.
Where Southaven's figures come from
Southaven's 65th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Southaven's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.