Bushong, KS
Bushong, KS's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Bushong at the 98th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 41 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Bushong at the 96th percentile, close to its 98th-percentile risk score.
Bushong's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Bushong's 41 counted buildings, 85.4% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Bushong compares
Bushong's risk sits at a similar level relative to Kansas (99th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (98th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bushong ranks 724 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 31,138 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 8 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Bushong and the insurance market
Bushong's 98th-percentile, very 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 Direct exposure dominates in Bushong (85.4%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
Where Bushong's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 41 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Bushong. The exposure-zones guide covers what Bushong's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.