Tar Heel, NC
How exposed is Tar Heel to wildfire?
Tar Heel sits at the 81st 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 128 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Tar Heel'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
128 buildings are counted in Tar Heel, and 54.7% 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.
Where Tar Heel ranks
Tar Heel scores 81st nationally and 86th 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, Tar Heel ranks 6,153 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 27,810 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 109 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Tar Heel
Tar Heel's 81st-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
Tar Heel's 54.7% 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 Tar Heel's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 128 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Tar Heel. The exposure-zones guide covers what Tar Heel's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.