Salem, SC
Salem wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Salem at the 77th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 143 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Salem's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 80th percentile nationally.
Salem's building exposure, zone by zone
143 buildings are counted in Salem, and 83.2% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
How Salem compares
Salem's risk sits at a similar level relative to South Carolina (78th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (77th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Salem ranks 7,161 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 27,180 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Carolina alone, it ranks 107 of 474 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Carolina on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Salem's 77th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 83.2% of Salem 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Salem's 7,161-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Salem, see the exposure-zones guide.