La Bolt, SD
How exposed is La Bolt to wildfire?
USFS scores La Bolt at the 50th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 87 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, La Bolt's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 49th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of La Bolt's buildings (62.1%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
How La Bolt compares
La Bolt's 50th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 30th ranking inside South Dakota does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 20 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, La Bolt ranks 15,805 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,630 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 310 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
La Bolt and the insurance market
La Bolt's elevated wildfire rating (50th 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
La Bolt's 62.1% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind La Bolt's 15,805-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond La Bolt, see the exposure-zones guide.