Spruce Pine, NC
Spruce Pine wildfire risk explained
Spruce Pine's 1,352 buildings earn a 71st-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Spruce Pine at the 73rd percentile, close to its 71st-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
56.9% of Spruce Pine's 1,352 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 769 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 43.1% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0% are Minimal.
How Spruce Pine compares
There's little gap between Spruce Pine's 71st national percentile and its 72nd percentile inside North Carolina, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Spruce Pine ranks 9,083 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,820 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 217 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Spruce Pine
Spruce Pine's high rating (71st 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
With 56.9% of Spruce Pine 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
Spruce Pine's 71st-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 Spruce Pine, see the exposure-zones guide.