Springfield, MO
Springfield wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Springfield lands at the 63rd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 68,779 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Springfield at the 65th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Springfield's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 4.9% of Springfield's 68,779 buildings carry Direct exposure and 5.6% carry Indirect; the remaining 89.5% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 68,779 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Springfield against the rest of the country
Springfield scores 63rd nationally and 63rd within Missouri — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Springfield ranks 11,696 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 117 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 396 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Springfield and the insurance market
Springfield's 63rd-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
With 89.5% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Springfield 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Springfield's 11,696-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Springfield, see the exposure-zones guide.