Barnegat, NJ
Barnegat, NJ's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Barnegat's 1,270 buildings earn a 87th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Barnegat at the 84th national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Barnegat's buildings actually sit
1,270 buildings are counted in Barnegat, and 49.8% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 37.7% in Direct exposure or the 12.4% rated Minimal.
Barnegat against the rest of the country
Barnegat scores 87th nationally and 93rd within New Jersey — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Barnegat ranks 4,008 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,244 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Jersey alone, it ranks 47 of 700 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Jersey on its state page.
Barnegat and the insurance market
Barnegat's 87th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Barnegat (49.8% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Barnegat's 4,008-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Barnegat, see the exposure-zones guide.