Maxton, NC
Maxton wildfire risk explained
Maxton sits at the 83rd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 1,180 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Maxton at the 84th percentile, close to its 83rd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 55.9% of Maxton's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 44.1% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 660 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
Maxton against the rest of the country
Maxton's risk sits at a similar level relative to North Carolina (91st percentile statewide) as it does nationally (83rd) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Maxton ranks 5,365 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,770 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 74 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Maxton
Maxton'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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Maxton's 55.9% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Maxton's 5,365-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Maxton, see the exposure-zones guide.