Aiken, SC
Aiken wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Aiken at the 67th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 13,640 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Aiken at the 66th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
13,640 buildings are counted in Aiken, and 57.3% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 40.8% in Direct exposure or the 1.9% rated Minimal. At 13,640 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Aiken compares
Inside South Carolina, Aiken sits at just the 42nd percentile even though it scores 67th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Aiken ranks 10,474 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,112 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Carolina alone, it ranks 271 of 474 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Carolina on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Aiken's 67th-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.
Hardening a home in Aiken
Aiken's 57.3% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
Where Aiken's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Aiken's 10,474-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Aiken's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.