Kansas, IL
Kansas wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Kansas at the 0th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 621 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Kansas at the 0th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 84.2% of Kansas's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 15.8% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Kansas against the rest of the country
Kansas scores 0th nationally and 5th within Illinois — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Kansas ranks 31,387 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,537 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 1,378 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
Kansas and the insurance market
Kansas's low wildfire rating (0th 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
Even with 84.2% of Kansas 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 621 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Kansas. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Kansas, see the exposure-zones guide.