Great Bend, KS
Great Bend wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Great Bend at the 54th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 8,281 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Great Bend's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 47th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 1.8% of Great Bend's 8,281 buildings carry Direct exposure and 26.9% carry Indirect; the remaining 71.3% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 8,281 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Great Bend compares
Great Bend scores 54th nationally and 40th 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, Great Bend ranks 14,560 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,015 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 435 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Great Bend and the insurance market
Great Bend's elevated rating (54th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Great Bend
With 71.3% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Great Bend gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Great Bend's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Great Bend's 14,560-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Great Bend's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.