Elmdale, KS
Elmdale wildfire risk explained
Elmdale sits at the 83rd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 41 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Elmdale at the 78th percentile, close to its 83rd-percentile risk score.
Elmdale's building exposure, zone by zone
41 buildings are counted in Elmdale, and 75.6% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 24.4% in Direct exposure or the 0% rated Minimal.
Where Elmdale ranks
There's little gap between Elmdale's 83rd national percentile and its 82nd percentile inside Kansas, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Elmdale ranks 5,483 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 31,140 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 132 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Elmdale and the insurance market
Elmdale's 83rd-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 Elmdale
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Elmdale (75.6% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Elmdale's 5,483-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Elmdale, see the exposure-zones guide.