Lost Springs, KS
Lost Springs, KS's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Lost Springs at the 63rd national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 66 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Lost Springs at the 54th national percentile — 9 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Lost Springs's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 59.1% of Lost Springs's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 40.9% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Lost Springs against the rest of the country
Lost Springs scores 63rd nationally and 57th within Kansas — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lost Springs ranks 11,662 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,419 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 312 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Lost Springs and the insurance market
Lost Springs's 63rd-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 59.1% of Lost Springs 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 Lost Springs's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 66 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Lost Springs. The exposure-zones guide covers what Lost Springs's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.