Bryson City, NC
Bryson City, NC's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Bryson City at the 79th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 1,062 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Bryson City at the 82nd national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Bryson City's buildings (53.2%) 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.
How Bryson City compares
There's little gap between Bryson City's 79th national percentile and its 84th 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, Bryson City ranks 6,498 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,509 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 122 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Bryson City
Bryson City's 79th-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.
Hardening a home in Bryson City
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Bryson City (53.2% 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
Bryson City's 79th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Bryson City, see the exposure-zones guide.