Wichita, KS
How exposed is Wichita to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Wichita lands at the 75th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 161,979 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Wichita at the 69th national percentile — 6 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Wichita's buildings actually sit
95% of Wichita's 161,979 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 4.9% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 161,979 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Wichita against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Wichita's 75th national percentile and its 72nd percentile inside Kansas, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Wichita ranks 7,877 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 37 by building count (1 is largest). Within Kansas alone, it ranks 205 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
At the 75th percentile nationally, Wichita carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
What would actually reduce this score
Wichita's 95% 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
Wichita's 75th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Wichita, see the exposure-zones guide.