Claremont, SD
Claremont wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Claremont at the 68th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 113 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Claremont at the 67th national percentile — 1 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
Most of Claremont's buildings (61.1%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Claremont against the rest of the country
Claremont's risk sits at a similar level relative to South Dakota (62nd percentile statewide) as it does nationally (68th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Claremont ranks 10,191 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 28,520 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 166 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Claremont and the insurance market
Claremont's high rating (68th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Hardening a home in Claremont
Claremont's 61.1% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Claremont's 10,191-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Claremont, see the exposure-zones guide.