St. George, SC
St. George wildfire risk explained
St. George sits at the 70th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 1,188 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks St. George at the 70th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
St. George's building exposure, zone by zone
1,188 buildings are counted in St. George, and 56.7% 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.
St. George against the rest of the country
There's little gap between St. George's 70th national percentile and its 59th percentile inside South Carolina, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, St. George ranks 9,432 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,723 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Carolina alone, it ranks 196 of 474 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in St. George
St. George's 70th-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
St. George's 56.7% 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.
Where St. George's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind St. George's 9,432-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what St. George's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.