Carolina Beach, NC
Carolina Beach wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Carolina Beach at the 61st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 3,673 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 Carolina Beach at the 54th percentile, close to its 61st-percentile risk score.
Carolina Beach's building exposure, zone by zone
Indirect exposure is dominant in Carolina Beach (90.8% of 3,673 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 5.3% sit in the Direct zone.
Where Carolina Beach ranks
There's little gap between Carolina Beach's 61st national percentile and its 60th 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, Carolina Beach ranks 12,202 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,558 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 311 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Carolina Beach and the insurance market
Carolina Beach's high rating (61st percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Hardening a home in Carolina Beach
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Carolina Beach (90.8% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Carolina Beach's 12,202-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Carolina Beach, see the exposure-zones guide.