Elkhart, KS
Elkhart wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Elkhart at the 85th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 1,667 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Elkhart at the 84th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Elkhart's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 61.6% of Elkhart's 1,667 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 23.9% Direct and 14.5% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Elkhart ranks
Elkhart's risk sits at a similar level relative to Kansas (86th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (85th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Elkhart ranks 4,598 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,535 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 104 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
Elkhart's 85th-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.
Hardening a home in Elkhart
Because 61.6% of Elkhart's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Elkhart's 4,598-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Elkhart, see the exposure-zones guide.