Ames, KS
How exposed is Ames to wildfire?
Ames sits at the 19th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 54 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Ames at the 14th national percentile — 5 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Ames rates 85.2% Minimal exposure against just 14.8% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 54 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Ames against the rest of the country
Ames's 19th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 2nd ranking inside Kansas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 17 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ames ranks 25,401 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,813 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 705 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Ames and the insurance market
Ames's low rating (19th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Ames
Ames's 85.2% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Ames's figures come from
Ames's 19th-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 Ames's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.