Southern Pines, NC
Southern Pines, NC's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Southern Pines lands at the 79th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 6,470 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Southern Pines at the 80th percentile, close to its 79th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Direct exposure dominates in Southern Pines: 62.4% of its 6,470 buildings, versus 30.4% Indirect and 7.2% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap. At 6,470 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Southern Pines against the rest of the country
Southern Pines scores 79th nationally and 84th 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, Southern Pines ranks 6,562 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,685 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 125 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Southern Pines and the insurance market
Southern Pines's high rating (79th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
What would actually reduce this score
Southern Pines's 62.4% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 6,470 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Southern Pines. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Southern Pines, see the exposure-zones guide.