Tell City, IN
Tell City, IN's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Tell City at the 22nd national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 4,511 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Tell City at the 24th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Tell City's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Tell City's buildings (83.8%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Where Tell City ranks
Tell City's 87th-percentile standing inside Indiana outpaces its 22nd national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Tell City ranks 24,482 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,785 by building count (1 is largest). Within Indiana alone, it ranks 127 of 967 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Indiana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Tell City
Tell City's moderate wildfire rating (22nd percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
What would actually reduce this score
Tell City's 83.8% 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.
Where Tell City's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Tell City's 24,482-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Tell City's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.