Milltown, SD
How exposed is Milltown to wildfire?
USFS scores Milltown at the 74th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 19 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Milltown at the 70th national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 100% of Milltown's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 0% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 19 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most. This is a small settlement by building count — 19 total — so these shares describe a handful of structures, not a statistical average across thousands.
How Milltown compares
There's little gap between Milltown's 74th national percentile and its 72nd percentile inside South Dakota, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Milltown ranks 8,364 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 31,469 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 125 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Milltown and the insurance market
Milltown's high rating (74th 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
With 100% of Milltown in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Milltown's 74th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. At 19 buildings, Milltown is close to the size where USFS's data gets thin — the data-quality guide explains why 517 places nationally get no score at all.