Pickstown, SD
Pickstown wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Pickstown lands at the 84th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 212 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Pickstown at the 81st percentile, close to its 84th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Pickstown's 212 counted buildings, 50% 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 Pickstown compares
There's little gap between Pickstown's 84th national percentile and its 85th 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, Pickstown ranks 4,990 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,417 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 68 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Pickstown
Pickstown's very high rating (84th 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.
Hardening a home in Pickstown
Because Direct exposure dominates in Pickstown (50%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
Where Pickstown's figures come from
Pickstown's 84th-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 Pickstown's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.