Charlotte, NC
Charlotte wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Charlotte at the 48th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 265,125 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 Charlotte at the 51st percentile, close to its 48th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 36.8% of Charlotte's 265,125 buildings carry Direct exposure and 16% carry Indirect; the remaining 47.3% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 265,125 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Charlotte compares
There's little gap between Charlotte's 48th national percentile and its 33rd 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, Charlotte ranks 16,520 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 16 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 519 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Charlotte
At the 48th national percentile, Charlotte rates elevated for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
Charlotte's 47.3% 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.
Where Charlotte's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Charlotte's 16,520-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Charlotte's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.