Belton, MO
Belton, MO's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Belton lands at the 44th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 9,411 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Belton at the 45th percentile, close to its 44th-percentile risk score.
Belton's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 82.6% of Belton's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 17.1% Direct and 0.4% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 9,411 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Belton ranks
Inside Missouri, Belton sits at just the 23rd percentile even though it scores 44th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Belton ranks 17,523 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,736 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 820 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Belton and the insurance market
At the 44th national percentile, Belton rates elevated for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 82.6% of Belton 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 Belton's 17,523-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Belton, see the exposure-zones guide.