Chanute, KS
Chanute wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Chanute at the 49th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 5,726 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Chanute's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 50th percentile nationally.
Chanute's building exposure, zone by zone
Chanute rates 92.5% Minimal exposure against just 7.5% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 5,726 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 5,726 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Chanute against the rest of the country
Chanute's 49th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 30th ranking inside Kansas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 19 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Chanute ranks 15,972 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,021 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 502 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Chanute and the insurance market
Chanute's elevated rating (49th 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 92.5% of Chanute 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 5,726 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Chanute. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Chanute, see the exposure-zones guide.