Waldron, KS
How exposed is Waldron to wildfire?
USFS scores Waldron at the 97th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 38 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Waldron at the 96th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Waldron's buildings actually sit
38 buildings are counted in Waldron, and 94.7% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
How Waldron compares
There's little gap between Waldron's 97th national percentile and its 99th percentile inside Kansas, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Waldron ranks 848 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 31,206 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 11 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
Waldron's 97th-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.
Hardening a home in Waldron
With 94.7% of Waldron in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 38 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Waldron. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Waldron, see the exposure-zones guide.