Mount Carbon, PA
How exposed is Mount Carbon to wildfire?
USFS scores Mount Carbon at the 54th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 42 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Mount Carbon at the 52nd national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Mount Carbon's 42 counted buildings, 71.4% 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 Mount Carbon ranks
Compare Mount Carbon's two percentiles: 90th within Pennsylvania, only 54th nationally — a gap of 36 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mount Carbon ranks 14,413 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 31,124 by building count (1 is largest). Within Pennsylvania alone, it ranks 201 of 1,991 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Pennsylvania on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 54th national percentile, Mount Carbon rates elevated for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because Direct exposure dominates in Mount Carbon (71.4%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Mount Carbon's 14,413-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Mount Carbon, see the exposure-zones guide.