Valley Falls, KS
Valley Falls, KS's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Valley Falls lands at the 84th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 646 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Valley Falls at the 86th percentile, close to its 84th-percentile risk score.
Where Valley Falls's buildings actually sit
646 buildings are counted in Valley Falls, and 70.4% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 29.6% in Direct exposure or the 0% rated Minimal.
Valley Falls against the rest of the country
Valley Falls scores 84th nationally and 84th within Kansas — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Valley Falls ranks 4,950 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,243 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 117 of 721 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Kansas on its state page.
Valley Falls and the insurance market
Valley Falls's 84th-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 70.4% of Valley Falls'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 Valley Falls's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Valley Falls's 4,950-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Valley Falls's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.