Carteret, NJ
Carteret, NJ's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Carteret lands at the 36th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 6,999 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 Carteret at the 36th percentile, close to its 36th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
99.8% of Carteret's 6,999 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 0.2% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 6,999 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Carteret against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Carteret's 36th national percentile and its 36th percentile inside New Jersey, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Carteret ranks 20,174 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,464 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Jersey alone, it ranks 449 of 700 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Jersey on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 36th national percentile, Carteret rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Carteret's 99.8% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Carteret's 20,174-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Carteret, see the exposure-zones guide.