Dortches, NC
Dortches wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Dortches at the 45th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 850 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Dortches at the 45th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Dortches's building exposure, zone by zone
84.6% of Dortches's 850 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 719 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 15.1% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0.4% are Minimal.
Where Dortches ranks
Inside North Carolina, Dortches sits at just the 25th percentile even though it scores 45th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Dortches ranks 17,337 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,159 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 575 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Dortches's elevated rating (45th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Dortches
Dortches's 84.6% 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.
Where Dortches's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Dortches's 17,337-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Dortches's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.