Bladenboro, NC
How exposed is Bladenboro to wildfire?
USFS scores Bladenboro at the 78th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 1,129 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Bladenboro at the 78th percentile, close to its 78th-percentile risk score.
Where Bladenboro's buildings actually sit
1,129 buildings are counted in Bladenboro, and 56.2% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
How Bladenboro compares
There's little gap between Bladenboro's 78th national percentile and its 81st 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, Bladenboro ranks 6,874 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,091 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 147 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Bladenboro and the insurance market
Bladenboro's 78th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 56.2% of Bladenboro in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Bladenboro's 78th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Bladenboro, see the exposure-zones guide.