Surf City, NJ
Surf City wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Surf City at the 87th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 2,526 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Surf City at the 78th percentile, close to its 87th-percentile risk score.
Where Surf City's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 100% of Surf City's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 0% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Surf City compares
There's little gap between Surf City's 87th national percentile and its 93rd percentile inside New Jersey, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Surf City ranks 4,226 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,253 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Jersey alone, it ranks 52 of 700 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Jersey on its state page.
Surf City and the insurance market
Surf City's very high rating (87th 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.
Hardening a home in Surf City
With 100% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Surf City gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Surf City's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Surf City's 4,226-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Surf City's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.