Whitley City, KY
Whitley City wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Whitley City at the 84th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 626 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Whitley City at the 87th percentile, close to its 84th-percentile risk score.
Whitley City's building exposure, zone by zone
626 buildings are counted in Whitley City, and 59.9% 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.
Whitley City against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Whitley City's 84th national percentile and its 86th percentile inside Kentucky, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Whitley City ranks 5,168 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,489 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kentucky alone, it ranks 79 of 552 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kentucky on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Whitley City's very high rating (84th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Whitley City's 59.9% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Whitley City's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Whitley City's 5,168-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Whitley City's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.