Sylvania, GA
Sylvania, GA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Sylvania sits at the 69th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 1,705 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Sylvania at the 69th percentile, close to its 69th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Sylvania's 1,705 counted buildings, 52.6% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Sylvania compares
Sylvania scores 69th nationally and 62nd within Georgia — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sylvania ranks 9,766 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,406 by building count (1 is largest). Within Georgia alone, it ranks 258 of 669 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Georgia on its state page.
Sylvania and the insurance market
Sylvania's 69th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Sylvania's 52.6% 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.
Where Sylvania's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,705 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Sylvania. The exposure-zones guide covers what Sylvania's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.