Marion, KS
How exposed is Marion to wildfire?
USFS scores Marion at the 75th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 1,316 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Marion's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 67th percentile nationally.
Where Marion's buildings actually sit
Only 15.3% of Marion's 1,316 buildings carry Direct exposure and 31.8% carry Indirect; the remaining 53% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Where Marion ranks
There's little gap between Marion's 75th national percentile and its 71st percentile inside Kansas, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Marion ranks 8,002 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,988 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 208 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Marion's 75th-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Marion's 53% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,316 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Marion. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Marion, see the exposure-zones guide.