Harkers Island, NC
Harkers Island, NC's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Harkers Island's 1,558 buildings earn a 80th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Harkers Island's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 75th percentile nationally.
Harkers Island's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 29.5% of Harkers Island's 1,558 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 70.5% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Harkers Island against the rest of the country
Harkers Island scores 80th nationally and 86th within North Carolina — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Harkers Island ranks 6,276 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,928 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 113 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Harkers Island and the insurance market
Harkers Island's 80th-percentile, very 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
Even with 70.5% of Harkers Island 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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Harkers Island's 6,276-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Harkers Island, see the exposure-zones guide.