Fort Yates, ND
Fort Yates, ND's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Fort Yates's 97 buildings earn a 81st-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Fort Yates at the 76th percentile, close to its 81st-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Indirect exposure is dominant in Fort Yates (96.9% of 97 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 3.1% sit in the Direct zone.
Where Fort Yates ranks
Fort Yates's risk sits at a similar level relative to North Dakota (95th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (81st) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Fort Yates ranks 6,025 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,192 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Dakota alone, it ranks 21 of 402 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Dakota on its state page.
Fort Yates and the insurance market
Fort Yates's 81st-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Fort Yates's 96.9% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Fort Yates's 81st-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Fort Yates, see the exposure-zones guide.