Kansas City, KS
Kansas City wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Kansas City at the 51st national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 61,785 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Kansas City at the 52nd national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Kansas City's buildings actually sit
74.1% of Kansas City's 61,785 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 21.8% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 61,785 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Kansas City against the rest of the country
Inside Kansas, Kansas City sits at just the 33rd percentile even though it scores 51st 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, Kansas City ranks 15,534 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 126 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 480 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Kansas City and the insurance market
Kansas City's elevated wildfire rating (51st percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
What would actually reduce this score
With 74.1% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Kansas City gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Kansas City's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 61,785 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Kansas City. The exposure-zones guide covers what Kansas City's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.