Charleston, WV
Charleston, WV's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Charleston lands at the 80th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 24,367 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Charleston at the 82nd national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Charleston's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 69.8% of Charleston's 24,367 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 28.3% Direct and 1.9% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 24,367 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Charleston against the rest of the country
Charleston scores 80th nationally and 72nd within West Virginia — 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 6,192 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 524 by building count (1 is largest). Within West Virginia alone, it ranks 121 of 429 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for West Virginia on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Charleston's very high rating (80th 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
Charleston's 69.8% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Charleston's 6,192-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Charleston, see the exposure-zones guide.