Melvern, KS
Melvern wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Melvern at the 81st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 296 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Melvern at the 80th percentile, close to its 81st-percentile risk score.
Melvern's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 82.1% of Melvern's 296 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 17.9% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Melvern against the rest of the country
Melvern's risk sits at a similar level relative to Kansas (80th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (81st) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Melvern ranks 5,983 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,729 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 148 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Melvern and the insurance market
Melvern's very high rating (81st percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Melvern's 82.1% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Melvern's 5,983-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Melvern, see the exposure-zones guide.