Westminster, SC
Westminster, SC's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Westminster's 1,480 buildings earn a 73rd-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Westminster at the 76th national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Westminster's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 52.6% of Westminster's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 47.4% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 779 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
Westminster against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Westminster's 73rd national percentile and its 67th percentile inside South Carolina, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Westminster ranks 8,583 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,252 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Carolina alone, it ranks 156 of 474 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Carolina on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Westminster
Westminster'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
With 52.6% of Westminster in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Westminster's 8,583-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Westminster, see the exposure-zones guide.