Waco, GA
How exposed is Waco to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Waco at the 88th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 350 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Waco at the 91st national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Waco's building exposure, zone by zone
350 buildings are counted in Waco, and 82.3% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
How Waco compares
Waco scores 88th nationally and 98th 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, Waco ranks 3,748 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 20,302 by building count (1 is largest). Within Georgia alone, it ranks 18 of 669 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Georgia on its state page.
Waco and the insurance market
Waco's 88th-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
With 82.3% of Waco in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Waco's 3,748-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Waco, see the exposure-zones guide.