Bluffton, SC
How exposed is Bluffton to wildfire?
Bluffton sits at the 91st percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 9,135 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Bluffton at the 86th national percentile — 5 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
Direct exposure dominates in Bluffton: 57% of its 9,135 buildings, versus 42.1% Indirect and 0.9% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap. At 9,135 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Bluffton compares
Bluffton's risk sits at a similar level relative to South Carolina (98th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (91st) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bluffton ranks 2,872 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,811 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Carolina alone, it ranks 10 of 474 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Bluffton
Bluffton's 91st-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.
Hardening a home in Bluffton
Bluffton's 57% 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 Bluffton's figures come from
Bluffton's 91st-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Bluffton's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.