St. Francis, KS
St. Francis wildfire risk explained
St. Francis sits at the 78th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 1,188 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 St. Francis at the 77th percentile, close to its 78th-percentile risk score.
St. Francis's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of St. Francis's buildings (95.5%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
How St. Francis compares
There's little gap between St. Francis's 78th national percentile and its 76th percentile inside Kansas, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, St. Francis ranks 6,996 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 10,717 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 178 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
St. Francis's 78th-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.
Hardening a home in St. Francis
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in St. Francis (95.5% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where St. Francis's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,188 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for St. Francis. The exposure-zones guide covers what St. Francis's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.