Pine Level, NC
Pine Level wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Pine Level at the 43rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 1,082 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Pine Level at the 41st percentile, close to its 43rd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Pine Level rates 53.2% Minimal exposure against just 44.1% Direct and 2.7% Indirect — of 1,082 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
How Pine Level compares
Inside North Carolina, Pine Level sits at just the 22nd percentile even though it scores 43rd nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pine Level ranks 17,937 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,395 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 605 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Pine Level and the insurance market
Pine Level's elevated rating (43rd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Pine Level's 53.2% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Pine Level's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Pine Level's 17,937-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Pine Level's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.