Albia, IA
Albia, IA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Albia at the 73rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 2,281 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Albia at the 75th national percentile — 2 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Albia's buildings actually sit
2,281 buildings are counted in Albia, and 77.8% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 20.3% in Direct exposure or the 1.9% rated Minimal.
How Albia compares
Compare Albia's two percentiles: 96th within Iowa, only 73rd nationally — a gap of 24 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Albia ranks 8,632 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,743 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 41 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Albia's 73rd-percentile, 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Albia's 77.8% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Albia's 8,632-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Albia, see the exposure-zones guide.