Cherokee, NC
Cherokee, NC's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Cherokee's 1,592 buildings earn a 79th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Cherokee at the 82nd percentile, close to its 79th-percentile risk score.
Cherokee's building exposure, zone by zone
1,592 buildings are counted in Cherokee, and 76.1% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
Cherokee against the rest of the country
Cherokee scores 79th nationally and 84th within North 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, Cherokee ranks 6,660 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,792 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 129 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Cherokee
Cherokee's 79th-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Hardening a home in Cherokee
Cherokee's 76.1% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,592 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Cherokee. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Cherokee, see the exposure-zones guide.