Plum Branch, SC
Plum Branch wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Plum Branch at the 72nd national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 120 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Plum Branch at the 74th national percentile — 2 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 classifies 78.3% of Plum Branch's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 21.7% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 94 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
Plum Branch against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Plum Branch's 72nd national percentile and its 66th 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, Plum Branch ranks 8,705 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 28,168 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Carolina alone, it ranks 161 of 474 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Carolina on its state page.
Plum Branch and the insurance market
Plum Branch's 72nd-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 78.3% of Plum Branch in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Plum Branch's 72nd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Plum Branch, see the exposure-zones guide.