Marion, SC
Marion wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Marion at the 73rd national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 3,296 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Marion at the 74th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 44.3% of Marion's 3,296 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 37.7% Direct and 18.1% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Marion against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Marion's 73rd national percentile and its 69th 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, Marion ranks 8,484 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,052 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Carolina alone, it ranks 148 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
Marion's 73rd-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
Marion's 44.3% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Marion's 73rd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Marion, see the exposure-zones guide.