White Plains, AL
White Plains wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, White Plains lands at the 86th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 634 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks White Plains at the 89th national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of White Plains's 634 counted buildings, 94.6% 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.
White Plains against the rest of the country
There's little gap between White Plains's 86th national percentile and its 91st percentile inside Alabama, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, White Plains ranks 4,367 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,411 by building count (1 is largest). Within Alabama alone, it ranks 57 of 592 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Alabama on its state page.
White Plains and the insurance market
White Plains's 86th-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 White Plains
Because Direct exposure dominates in White Plains (94.6%), 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
White Plains's 86th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond White Plains, see the exposure-zones guide.