Marion, SD
Marion, SD's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Marion at the 47th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 590 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Marion at the 47th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Marion's buildings actually sit
Only 29.3% of Marion's 590 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 70.7% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Marion against the rest of the country
Inside South Dakota, Marion sits at just the 25th percentile even though it scores 47th 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, Marion ranks 16,748 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,968 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 332 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Marion's elevated rating (47th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Marion
Marion's 70.7% 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
Marion's 47th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Marion, see the exposure-zones guide.