Ottawa, KS
How exposed is Ottawa to wildfire?
Ottawa sits at the 49th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 6,491 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Ottawa at the 50th percentile, close to its 49th-percentile risk score.
Ottawa's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 9.8% of Ottawa's 6,491 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0.5% carry Indirect; the remaining 89.8% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 6,491 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Ottawa against the rest of the country
Inside Kansas, Ottawa sits at just the 31st percentile even though it scores 49th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ottawa ranks 15,942 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,674 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 500 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Ottawa and the insurance market
At the 49th national percentile, Ottawa rates elevated for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Ottawa
With 89.8% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Ottawa gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Ottawa's 49th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Ottawa, see the exposure-zones guide.