Alden, IA
Alden, IA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Alden at the 9th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 550 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Alden's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 8th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 8.6% of Alden's 550 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 91.5% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
How Alden compares
Alden's risk sits at a similar level relative to Iowa (18th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (9th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Alden ranks 28,740 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 16,567 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 835 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Alden
At the 9th national percentile, Alden rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Alden
Alden's 91.5% 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 Alden's 28,740-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Alden, see the exposure-zones guide.