Heath Springs, SC
Heath Springs wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Heath Springs at the 69th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 459 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 Heath Springs at the 72nd percentile, close to its 69th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
82.6% of Heath Springs's 459 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 379 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 17.4% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0% are Minimal.
How Heath Springs compares
There's little gap between Heath Springs's 69th national percentile and its 55th percentile inside South Carolina, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Heath Springs ranks 9,713 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,087 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Carolina alone, it ranks 216 of 474 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Carolina on its state page.
Heath Springs and the insurance market
Heath Springs'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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 82.6% of Heath Springs 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 459 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Heath Springs. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Heath Springs, see the exposure-zones guide.