Hays, KS
Hays wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Hays at the 56th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 9,139 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Hays at the 52nd national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Hays's buildings actually sit
Most of Hays's buildings (86.2% of 9,139) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 9,139 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Hays compares
There's little gap between Hays's 56th national percentile and its 43rd percentile inside Kansas, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Hays ranks 14,021 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,807 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 410 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
Hays's elevated rating (56th 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 Hays
With 86.2% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Hays gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Hays's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Hays's 14,021-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Hays's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.