Buxton, NC
How exposed is Buxton to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Buxton lands at the 93rd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 1,355 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Buxton at the 89th percentile, close to its 93rd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Buxton's 1,355 counted buildings, 54.9% carry Direct exposure and only 0.4% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Where Buxton ranks
Buxton scores 93rd nationally and 99th within North Carolina — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Buxton ranks 2,298 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,810 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 10 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Buxton and the insurance market
Buxton's 93rd-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Buxton's 54.9% 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 Buxton's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Buxton's 2,298-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Buxton's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.