Ipswich, SD
How exposed is Ipswich to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Ipswich lands at the 34th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 664 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Ipswich at the 33rd national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Ipswich's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 84.5% of Ipswich's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 15.5% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Ipswich compares
Inside South Dakota, Ipswich sits at just the 7th percentile even though it scores 34th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ipswich ranks 20,876 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,021 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 409 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 34th national percentile, Ipswich rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 84.5% of Ipswich 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Ipswich's 20,876-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Ipswich, see the exposure-zones guide.