Dividing Creek, NJ
Dividing Creek wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Dividing Creek at the 83rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 274 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 Dividing Creek at the 79th percentile, close to its 83rd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Dividing Creek's 274 counted buildings, 82.9% 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.
Dividing Creek against the rest of the country
Dividing Creek's risk sits at a similar level relative to New Jersey (88th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (83rd) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Dividing Creek ranks 5,263 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 22,400 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Jersey alone, it ranks 88 of 700 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Jersey on its state page.
Dividing Creek and the insurance market
Dividing Creek's 83rd-percentile, very 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
With 82.9% of Dividing Creek in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Dividing Creek's 83rd-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 Dividing Creek, see the exposure-zones guide.