Belmont, NC
How exposed is Belmont to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Belmont at the 51st national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 5,463 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 Belmont at the 54th percentile, close to its 51st-percentile risk score.
Where Belmont's buildings actually sit
Most of Belmont's buildings (43.1%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone. At 5,463 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Belmont ranks
There's little gap between Belmont's 51st national percentile and its 40th percentile inside North Carolina, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Belmont ranks 15,513 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,162 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 461 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 51st national percentile, Belmont rates elevated for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 43.1% of Belmont'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 5,463 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Belmont. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Belmont, see the exposure-zones guide.