Towanda, KS
Towanda, KS's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Towanda at the 92nd national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 835 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Towanda at the 89th national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Indirect exposure is dominant in Towanda (90.3% of 835 buildings): far enough from burnable vegetation to avoid flame contact, close enough for wind-blown embers. Only 9.7% sit in the Direct zone.
How Towanda compares
There's little gap between Towanda's 92nd national percentile and its 93rd percentile inside Kansas, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Towanda ranks 2,523 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,301 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 53 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
Towanda's 92nd-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 90.3% of Towanda'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.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 835 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Towanda. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Towanda, see the exposure-zones guide.