Balfour, NC
Balfour wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Balfour at the 46th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 642 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 Balfour at the 49th percentile, close to its 46th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Balfour's 642 counted buildings, 74.5% carry Direct exposure and only 10.9% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Balfour against the rest of the country
Inside North Carolina, Balfour sits at just the 27th percentile even though it scores 46th 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, Balfour ranks 17,149 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,298 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 560 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Balfour
Balfour's elevated rating (46th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Balfour
Balfour's 74.5% 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 Balfour's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 642 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Balfour. The exposure-zones guide covers what Balfour's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.