Ayden, NC
Ayden wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Ayden lands at the 34th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 2,483 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Ayden at the 32nd national percentile — 2 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
USFS puts 59.3% of Ayden's 2,483 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 39.6% Direct and 1.1% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Ayden compares
Inside North Carolina, Ayden sits at just the 6th percentile even though it scores 34th 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, Ayden ranks 20,773 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,329 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 726 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Ayden and the insurance market
At the 34th national percentile, Ayden rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 59.3% of Ayden's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 2,483 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Ayden. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Ayden, see the exposure-zones guide.