Soldier, KS
How exposed is Soldier to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Soldier lands at the 84th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 103 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Soldier at the 85th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Soldier's buildings actually sit
Only 46.6% of Soldier's 103 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 53.4% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Where Soldier ranks
There's little gap between Soldier's 84th national percentile and its 84th percentile inside Kansas, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Soldier ranks 4,949 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 28,894 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 116 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Soldier and the insurance market
Soldier's 84th-percentile, very 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
Even with 53.4% of Soldier outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Soldier's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 103 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Soldier. The exposure-zones guide covers what Soldier's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.