Furman, SC
Furman wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Furman at the 69th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 214 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Furman at the 68th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Furman's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Furman's 214 counted buildings, 68.7% 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.
Furman against the rest of the country
Inside South Carolina, Furman sits at just the 52nd percentile even though it scores 69th 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, Furman ranks 9,935 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,345 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Carolina alone, it ranks 228 of 474 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Carolina on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Furman's 69th-percentile, 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 68.7% of Furman 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
Furman's 69th-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 Furman, see the exposure-zones guide.