Waubay, SD
Waubay, SD's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Waubay lands at the 65th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 601 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 Waubay at the 63rd percentile, close to its 65th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 37.8% of Waubay's 601 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 62.2% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Where Waubay ranks
Waubay's risk sits at a similar level relative to South Dakota (57th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (65th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Waubay ranks 10,949 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,830 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 187 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Waubay and the insurance market
Waubay's high rating (65th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Waubay's 62.2% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Waubay's 10,949-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Waubay, see the exposure-zones guide.