Wedowee, AL
Wedowee, AL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Wedowee at the 85th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 687 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Wedowee at the 89th national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Wedowee's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 69% of Wedowee's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 31% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 474 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
How Wedowee compares
Wedowee scores 85th nationally and 88th within Alabama — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Wedowee ranks 4,653 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 14,789 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alabama alone, it ranks 71 of 592 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alabama on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Wedowee's 85th-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.
Hardening a home in Wedowee
Because Direct exposure dominates in Wedowee (69%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Wedowee's 4,653-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Wedowee, see the exposure-zones guide.