Ortley, SD
Ortley, SD's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Ortley at the 74th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 87 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 Ortley at the 67th percentile, close to its 74th-percentile risk score.
Ortley's building exposure, zone by zone
Of Ortley's 87 counted buildings, 70.1% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Ortley compares
There's little gap between Ortley'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, Ortley ranks 8,201 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,632 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 123 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Ortley and the insurance market
Ortley'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.
What would actually reduce this score
Ortley's 70.1% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Ortley's figures come from
Ortley's 74th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Ortley's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.