Elk City, KS
Elk City wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Elk City at the 67th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 285 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Elk City at the 67th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Elk City's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 67.7% of Elk City's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 32.3% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Elk City against the rest of the country
Elk City scores 67th nationally and 63rd within Kansas — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Elk City ranks 10,334 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 22,032 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 269 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Elk City's 67th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Elk City's 67.7% 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.
Where Elk City's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Elk City's 10,334-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Elk City's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.