Summerset, SD
Summerset wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Summerset at the 89th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 1,041 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Summerset at the 90th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Summerset's buildings (67.4%) 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 Summerset compares
There's little gap between Summerset's 89th national percentile and its 93rd 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, Summerset ranks 3,349 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,651 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 34 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Summerset's 89th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 67.4% of Summerset'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.
Where Summerset's figures come from
Summerset's 89th-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 Summerset's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.