Marietta, NC
How exposed is Marietta to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Marietta at the 75th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 135 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 Marietta at the 76th percentile, close to its 75th-percentile risk score.
Where Marietta's buildings actually sit
Of Marietta's 135 counted buildings, 60.7% 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.
Where Marietta ranks
Marietta's risk sits at a similar level relative to North Carolina (77th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (75th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Marietta ranks 7,852 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 27,507 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 176 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Marietta
Marietta's 75th-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
Marietta's 60.7% 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.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 135 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Marietta. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Marietta, see the exposure-zones guide.