Brookings, SD
How exposed is Brookings to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Brookings lands at the 61st percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 7,727 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 Brookings at the 60th percentile, close to its 61st-percentile risk score.
Brookings's building exposure, zone by zone
Brookings rates 80.4% Minimal exposure against just 17% Direct and 2.6% Indirect — of 7,727 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 7,727 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Brookings ranks
Brookings's risk sits at a similar level relative to South Dakota (48th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (61st) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Brookings ranks 12,462 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,205 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 226 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 61st percentile nationally, Brookings carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
Hardening a home in Brookings
With 80.4% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Brookings gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 7,727 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Brookings. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Brookings, see the exposure-zones guide.