Wounded Knee, SD
Wounded Knee wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Wounded Knee lands at the 98th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 81 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Wounded Knee at the 99th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Wounded Knee's buildings actually sit
81 buildings are counted in Wounded Knee, and 95.1% 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.
Where Wounded Knee ranks
Wounded Knee scores 98th nationally and 100th within South Dakota — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Wounded Knee ranks 520 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,864 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 3 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Wounded Knee and the insurance market
Wounded Knee's 98th-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 Wounded Knee
Because Direct exposure dominates in Wounded Knee (95.1%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Wounded Knee's 520-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Wounded Knee, see the exposure-zones guide.