Sulphur, OK
Sulphur wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Sulphur lands at the 90th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 2,825 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Sulphur at the 91st national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
75.9% of Sulphur's 2,825 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 23.3% Direct and 0.8% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
Sulphur against the rest of the country
Inside Oklahoma, Sulphur sits at just the 46th percentile even though it scores 90th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sulphur ranks 3,317 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,712 by building count (1 is largest). Within Oklahoma alone, it ranks 455 of 834 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Oklahoma on its state page.
Sulphur and the insurance market
Sulphur's 90th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Sulphur's 75.9% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Sulphur's 90th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Sulphur, see the exposure-zones guide.