Chester, SD
Chester wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Chester lands at the 50th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 209 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Chester at the 48th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 71.8% of Chester's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 28.2% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Chester against the rest of the country
Chester's 50th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 30th ranking inside South Dakota does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 20 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Chester ranks 15,741 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,535 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 307 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Chester and the insurance market
Chester's elevated rating (50th 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
Chester's 71.8% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Chester's 15,741-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Chester, see the exposure-zones guide.