Charleston, SC
Charleston wildfire risk explained
Charleston sits at the 89th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 52,012 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Charleston at the 85th percentile, close to its 89th-percentile risk score.
Where Charleston's buildings actually sit
Only 24.2% of Charleston's 52,012 buildings carry Direct exposure and 31.6% carry Indirect; the remaining 44.2% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 52,012 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Charleston ranks
Charleston scores 89th nationally and 96th within South 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, Charleston ranks 3,510 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 166 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Carolina alone, it ranks 20 of 474 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Carolina on its state page.
Charleston and the insurance market
Charleston's very high rating (89th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 44.2% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Charleston gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Charleston's figures come from
Charleston's 89th-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 Charleston's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.