Litchfield Beach, SC
How exposed is Litchfield Beach to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Litchfield Beach at the 83rd national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 4,824 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Litchfield Beach at the 79th national percentile — 4 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Litchfield Beach's buildings actually sit
54.2% of Litchfield Beach's 4,824 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 2,612 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 30.6% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 15.3% are Minimal.
How Litchfield Beach compares
There's little gap between Litchfield Beach's 83rd national percentile and its 90th 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, Litchfield Beach ranks 5,427 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,543 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Carolina alone, it ranks 47 of 474 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Litchfield Beach
Litchfield Beach's 83rd-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.
Hardening a home in Litchfield Beach
Litchfield Beach's 54.2% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Litchfield Beach's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 4,824 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Litchfield Beach. The exposure-zones guide covers what Litchfield Beach's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.