White Oak, NC
White Oak wildfire risk explained
White Oak sits at the 85th 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 315 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 White Oak at the 86th percentile, close to its 85th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of White Oak's 315 counted buildings, 94.3% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How White Oak compares
There's little gap between White Oak's 85th national percentile and its 94th percentile inside North Carolina, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, White Oak ranks 4,672 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,235 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Carolina alone, it ranks 50 of 772 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Carolina on its state page.
White Oak and the insurance market
White Oak's very high rating (85th 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 White Oak
Because Direct exposure dominates in White Oak (94.3%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
Where White Oak's figures come from
White Oak's 85th-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 White Oak's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.