Old Elm Spring Colony, SD
How exposed is Old Elm Spring Colony to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Old Elm Spring Colony at the 70th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 33 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Old Elm Spring Colony's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 64th percentile nationally.
Old Elm Spring Colony's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 69.7% of Old Elm Spring Colony's 33 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 30.3% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Old Elm Spring Colony compares
Old Elm Spring Colony scores 70th nationally and 65th within South Dakota — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Old Elm Spring Colony ranks 9,559 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 31,322 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 156 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
Old Elm Spring Colony's 70th-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
Because 69.7% of Old Elm Spring Colony's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Old Elm Spring Colony's 70th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Old Elm Spring Colony, see the exposure-zones guide.