Morehead City, NC
How exposed is Morehead City to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Morehead City at the 91st national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 4,965 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 Morehead City at the 87th percentile, close to its 91st-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 15.5% of Morehead City's 4,965 buildings carry Direct exposure and 35.7% carry Indirect; the remaining 48.8% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Morehead City against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Morehead City's 91st national percentile and its 98th percentile inside North Carolina, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Morehead City ranks 2,866 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,454 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 16 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Morehead City's very high rating (91st percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
What would actually reduce this score
With 48.8% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Morehead City gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Morehead City's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 4,965 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Morehead City. The exposure-zones guide covers what Morehead City's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.