Elizabeth City, NC
How exposed is Elizabeth City to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Elizabeth City at the 50th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 8,223 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 Elizabeth City at the 48th percentile, close to its 50th-percentile risk score.
Elizabeth City's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 34.3% of Elizabeth City's 8,223 buildings carry Direct exposure and 22.4% carry Indirect; the remaining 43.3% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 8,223 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Elizabeth City ranks
There's little gap between Elizabeth City's 50th national percentile and its 37th percentile inside North Carolina, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Elizabeth City ranks 15,894 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,036 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 487 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Elizabeth City and the insurance market
At the 50th national percentile, Elizabeth City rates elevated for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Elizabeth City
Even with 43.3% of Elizabeth City outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Elizabeth City's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Elizabeth City's 15,894-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Elizabeth City's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.