Cape Carteret, NC
Cape Carteret, NC's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Cape Carteret at the 79th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 1,356 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Cape Carteret's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 75th percentile nationally.
Cape Carteret's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Cape Carteret's 1,356 counted buildings, 61.8% carry Direct exposure and only 11.6% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Cape Carteret compares
Cape Carteret scores 79th nationally and 82nd 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, Cape Carteret ranks 6,780 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,806 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 142 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Cape Carteret
Cape Carteret'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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 61.8% of Cape Carteret 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.
Where Cape Carteret's figures come from
Cape Carteret's 79th-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 Cape Carteret's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.