Ashland Heights, SD
Ashland Heights wildfire risk explained
Ashland Heights sits at the 91st 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 562 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Ashland Heights's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 91st percentile nationally.
Ashland Heights's building exposure, zone by zone
76.7% of Ashland Heights's 562 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 431 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 23.3% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0% are Minimal.
Where Ashland Heights ranks
There's little gap between Ashland Heights's 91st national percentile and its 95th percentile inside South Dakota, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ashland Heights ranks 2,936 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 16,380 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 23 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Ashland Heights
Ashland Heights's 91st-percentile, very 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Ashland Heights's 76.7% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Ashland Heights's 2,936-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Ashland Heights, see the exposure-zones guide.