Alden, KS
How exposed is Alden to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Alden at the 58th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 144 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Alden at the 51st percentile, close to its 58th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 83.3% of Alden's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 16.7% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Alden compares
There's little gap between Alden's 58th national percentile and its 50th percentile inside Kansas, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Alden ranks 13,107 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 27,120 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 363 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Alden and the insurance market
Alden's elevated rating (58th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 83.3% of Alden outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Alden's 58th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Alden, see the exposure-zones guide.