Homestead, MO
How exposed is Homestead to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Homestead lands at the 66th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 100 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Homestead at the 68th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Homestead's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Homestead's 100 counted buildings, 62% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Homestead against the rest of the country
Homestead scores 66th nationally and 72nd within Missouri — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Homestead ranks 10,682 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,038 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 295 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Homestead and the insurance market
Homestead's 66th-percentile, 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
With 62% of Homestead in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Homestead's 10,682-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Homestead, see the exposure-zones guide.