Baltic, SD
How exposed is Baltic to wildfire?
USFS scores Baltic at the 47th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 558 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Baltic at the 47th national percentile — 0 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
Baltic rates 72% Minimal exposure against just 28% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 558 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Baltic against the rest of the country
Baltic's 47th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 24th ranking inside South Dakota does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 23 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Baltic ranks 16,846 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 16,446 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 334 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Baltic and the insurance market
Baltic's elevated rating (47th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 72% of Baltic 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Baltic's 16,846-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Baltic, see the exposure-zones guide.