Emerald Isle, NC
Emerald Isle wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Emerald Isle at the 55th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 5,701 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 Emerald Isle at the 49th percentile, close to its 55th-percentile risk score.
Where Emerald Isle's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 86.7% of Emerald Isle's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 13.4% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 5,701 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Emerald Isle against the rest of the country
Emerald Isle's risk sits at a similar level relative to North Carolina (53rd percentile statewide) as it does nationally (55th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Emerald Isle ranks 14,065 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,033 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 363 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
Emerald Isle's elevated wildfire rating (55th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
What would actually reduce this score
With 86.7% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Emerald Isle gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Emerald Isle's 55th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Emerald Isle, see the exposure-zones guide.