Pilot Knob, MO
Pilot Knob wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Pilot Knob at the 68th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 433 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Pilot Knob at the 70th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Pilot Knob's building exposure, zone by zone
Indirect exposure is dominant in Pilot Knob (69.3% of 433 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 30.7% sit in the Direct zone.
How Pilot Knob compares
Pilot Knob's risk sits at a similar level relative to Missouri (78th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (68th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Pilot Knob ranks 10,057 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,585 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 237 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Pilot Knob and the insurance market
Pilot Knob's 68th-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 69.3% of Pilot Knob'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
Pilot Knob's 68th-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 Pilot Knob, see the exposure-zones guide.