Atchison, KS
Atchison, KS's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Atchison lands at the 68th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 5,682 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Atchison at the 69th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Atchison's building exposure, zone by zone
5,682 buildings are counted in Atchison, and 50.5% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 25.8% in Direct exposure or the 23.7% rated Minimal. At 5,682 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Atchison compares
Atchison scores 68th nationally and 64th within Kansas — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Atchison ranks 10,208 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,042 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 261 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Atchison and the insurance market
Atchison's 68th-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.
Hardening a home in Atchison
Atchison's 50.5% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
Where Atchison's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Atchison's 10,208-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Atchison's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.