Vandemere, NC
How exposed is Vandemere to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Vandemere lands at the 74th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 229 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Vandemere at the 70th percentile, close to its 74th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
61.1% of Vandemere's 229 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 140 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 34.9% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 3.9% are Minimal.
Where Vandemere ranks
Vandemere scores 74th nationally and 76th 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, Vandemere ranks 8,072 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 23,826 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 185 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
Vandemere and the insurance market
Vandemere's 74th-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.
Hardening a home in Vandemere
Because Direct exposure dominates in Vandemere (61.1%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Vandemere's 8,072-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Vandemere, see the exposure-zones guide.