Sharpsburg, NC
How exposed is Sharpsburg to wildfire?
USFS scores Sharpsburg at the 45th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 906 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 Sharpsburg at the 44th percentile, close to its 45th-percentile risk score.
Sharpsburg's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 59.8% of Sharpsburg's 906 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 40.2% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Sharpsburg against the rest of the country
Inside North Carolina, Sharpsburg sits at just the 26th percentile even though it scores 45th 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, Sharpsburg ranks 17,281 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 12,672 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 571 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Sharpsburg and the insurance market
Sharpsburg's elevated wildfire rating (45th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 59.8% of Sharpsburg's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Sharpsburg's figures come from
Sharpsburg's 45th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Sharpsburg's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.