Festus, MO
Festus, MO's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Festus sits at the 50th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 5,151 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 Festus at the 51st percentile, close to its 50th-percentile risk score.
Where Festus's buildings actually sit
Only 11.9% of Festus's 5,151 buildings carry Direct exposure and 42.2% carry Indirect; the remaining 45.9% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 5,151 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Festus compares
Festus's 50th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 33rd ranking inside Missouri does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 17 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Festus ranks 15,755 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,346 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 714 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Festus
Festus's elevated wildfire rating (50th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Hardening a home in Festus
Even with 45.9% of Festus outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Festus's 50th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Festus, see the exposure-zones guide.