Lee's Summit, MO
Lee's Summit wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Lee's Summit lands at the 44th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 35,370 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lee's Summit at the 45th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Lee's Summit's buildings actually sit
USFS classifies 70.6% of Lee's Summit's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 16.8% Direct and 12.6% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 35,370 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Lee's Summit against the rest of the country
Inside Missouri, Lee's Summit sits at just the 22nd percentile even though it scores 44th 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, Lee's Summit ranks 17,586 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 303 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 829 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Lee's Summit
Lee's Summit's elevated wildfire rating (44th 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.
Hardening a home in Lee's Summit
Even with 70.6% of Lee's Summit 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.
Where Lee's Summit's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lee's Summit's 17,586-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Lee's Summit's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.