Southside, AL
Southside, AL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Southside lands at the 80th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 5,176 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 Southside at the 83rd percentile, close to its 80th-percentile risk score.
Southside's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Southside's 5,176 counted buildings, 68.9% carry Direct exposure and only 3% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first. At 5,176 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Southside ranks
Southside's risk sits at a similar level relative to Alabama (74th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (80th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Southside ranks 6,386 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,325 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alabama alone, it ranks 157 of 592 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alabama on its state page.
Southside and the insurance market
Southside's high rating (80th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Southside's 68.9% 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
Southside's 80th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Southside, see the exposure-zones guide.