Baxter Springs, KS
How exposed is Baxter Springs to wildfire?
Baxter Springs's 2,651 buildings earn a 67th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Baxter Springs at the 69th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
74.4% of Baxter Springs's 2,651 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 17.3% Direct and 8.3% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
Where Baxter Springs ranks
Baxter Springs scores 67th nationally and 63rd 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, Baxter Springs ranks 10,368 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,019 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 270 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Baxter Springs
Baxter Springs's 67th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 74.4% of Baxter Springs's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Baxter Springs's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 2,651 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Baxter Springs. The exposure-zones guide covers what Baxter Springs's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.