Dante, SD
How exposed is Dante to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Dante at the 70th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 86 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Dante at the 65th national percentile — 4 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 61.6% of Dante's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 38.4% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 53 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
Dante against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Dante's 70th national percentile and its 64th percentile inside South Dakota, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Dante ranks 9,621 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,670 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 157 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Dante and the insurance market
Dante's 70th-percentile, 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 Dante (61.6%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 86 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Dante. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Dante, see the exposure-zones guide.