Temple, TX
Temple wildfire risk explained
Temple's 28,467 buildings earn a 75th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Temple at the 72nd national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Temple's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 50.6% of Temple's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 25% Direct and 24.4% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 28,467 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Temple ranks
Temple's 75th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 46th ranking inside Texas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 29 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Temple ranks 7,895 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 423 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 969 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Temple
Temple's 75th-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
With 50.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Temple gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Temple's figures come from
Temple's 75th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Temple's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.