Surf City, NC
How exposed is Surf City to wildfire?
Surf City sits at the 86th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 3,762 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Surf City's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 82nd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 24.9% of Surf City's 3,762 buildings carry Direct exposure and 29.5% carry Indirect; the remaining 45.7% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Where Surf City ranks
Surf City's risk sits at a similar level relative to North Carolina (95th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (86th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Surf City ranks 4,350 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,464 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 38 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
Surf City's 86th-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
Surf City's 45.7% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 3,762 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Surf City. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Surf City, see the exposure-zones guide.