St. Pauls, NC
St. Pauls wildfire risk explained
USFS scores St. Pauls at the 83rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 1,250 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks St. Pauls at the 84th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where St. Pauls's buildings actually sit
69.9% of St. Pauls's 1,250 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 30.1% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
Where St. Pauls ranks
St. Pauls scores 83rd nationally and 90th 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, St. Pauls ranks 5,367 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,353 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 76 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
St. Pauls's 83rd-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.
Hardening a home in St. Pauls
Because 69.9% of St. Pauls'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.
More on how this number was built
St. Pauls's 83rd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond St. Pauls, see the exposure-zones guide.