Tabor City, NC
How exposed is Tabor City to wildfire?
Tabor City sits at the 73rd 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 1,619 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Tabor City at the 71st percentile, close to its 73rd-percentile risk score.
Where Tabor City's buildings actually sit
1,619 buildings are counted in Tabor City, and 53.6% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 46.4% in Direct exposure or the 0% rated Minimal.
Tabor City against the rest of the country
Tabor City's risk sits at a similar level relative to North Carolina (74th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (73rd) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Tabor City ranks 8,513 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,697 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 201 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Tabor City
Tabor City's 73rd-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
Because 53.6% of Tabor City'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.
Where Tabor City's figures come from
Tabor City's 73rd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Tabor City's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.