Delco, NC
How exposed is Delco to wildfire?
USFS scores Delco at the 73rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 287 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 Delco at the 73rd percentile, close to its 73rd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Delco's 287 counted buildings, 84% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Where Delco ranks
Delco scores 73rd nationally and 74th 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, Delco ranks 8,512 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,988 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 200 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Delco
Delco's 73rd-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Delco's 84% 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
Delco's 73rd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Delco, see the exposure-zones guide.