Silver City, NC
Silver City, NC's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Silver City lands at the 84th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 525 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Silver City at the 85th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Silver City's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Silver City's 525 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.
Silver City against the rest of the country
Silver City scores 84th nationally and 93rd within North Carolina — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Silver City ranks 5,047 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 16,946 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 58 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Silver City and the insurance market
Silver City's 84th-percentile, very 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 71.4% of Silver City 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
Silver City's 84th-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 Silver City, see the exposure-zones guide.