Medicine Lodge, KS
Medicine Lodge wildfire risk explained
Medicine Lodge's 1,387 buildings earn a 97th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Medicine Lodge at the 98th percentile, close to its 97th-percentile risk score.
Where Medicine Lodge's buildings actually sit
93.8% of Medicine Lodge's 1,387 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 6.2% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
Medicine Lodge against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Medicine Lodge's 97th national percentile and its 99th percentile inside Kansas, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Medicine Lodge ranks 816 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,682 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 10 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Medicine Lodge
Medicine Lodge's 97th-percentile, very 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
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Medicine Lodge (93.8% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,387 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Medicine Lodge. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Medicine Lodge, see the exposure-zones guide.