Chester, AR
How exposed is Chester to wildfire?
USFS scores Chester at the 88th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 94 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Chester at the 90th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Chester's buildings actually sit
94 buildings are counted in Chester, and 80.9% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
Where Chester ranks
Chester scores 88th nationally and 96th within Arkansas — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Chester ranks 3,865 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,297 by building count (1 is largest). Within Arkansas alone, it ranks 25 of 614 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Arkansas on its state page.
Chester and the insurance market
Chester's 88th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 80.9% of Chester in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
Where Chester's figures come from
Chester's 88th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Chester's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.