Durham, NC
How exposed is Durham to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Durham at the 30th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 84,643 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Durham at the 31st percentile, close to its 30th-percentile risk score.
Where Durham's buildings actually sit
84,643 buildings are counted in Durham, and 48.6% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 33.4% rated Minimal. At 84,643 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Durham ranks
Durham's 30th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 3rd ranking inside North Carolina does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 28 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Durham ranks 22,036 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 87 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 753 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
Durham's moderate rating (30th 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 Durham
With 48.6% of Durham 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
Durham's 30th-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 Durham, see the exposure-zones guide.