Sterling City, TX
Sterling City, TX's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Sterling City at the 98th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 881 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 Sterling City at the 98th percentile, close to its 98th-percentile risk score.
Sterling City's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 82.3% of Sterling City's 881 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 17.7% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Sterling City compares
Sterling City scores 98th nationally and 99th within Texas — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sterling City ranks 644 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,906 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 27 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Sterling City's very high rating (98th 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.
Hardening a home in Sterling City
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Sterling City (82.3% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Sterling City's 644-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Sterling City, see the exposure-zones guide.