Timber Lake, SD
Timber Lake wildfire risk explained
Timber Lake's 353 buildings earn a 77th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Timber Lake's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 72nd percentile nationally.
Timber Lake's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Timber Lake's buildings (81.3%) 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 Timber Lake compares
There's little gap between Timber Lake's 77th national percentile and its 76th 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, Timber Lake ranks 7,134 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 20,248 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 106 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Timber Lake
Timber Lake's 77th-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because 81.3% of Timber Lake'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 Timber Lake's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 353 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Timber Lake. The exposure-zones guide covers what Timber Lake's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.