Barnes City, IA
Barnes City, IA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Barnes City lands at the 61st percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 201 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Barnes City's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 63rd percentile nationally.
Barnes City's building exposure, zone by zone
Barnes City rates 73.6% Minimal exposure against just 26.4% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 201 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Barnes City against the rest of the country
Within Iowa, Barnes City ranks higher (85th percentile) than it does nationally (61st) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Barnes City ranks 12,227 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 24,797 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 156 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Barnes City and the insurance market
Barnes City's 61st-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.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 73.6% of Barnes City outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Barnes City's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Barnes City's 12,227-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Barnes City's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.