Carter Lake, IA
Carter Lake wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Carter Lake lands at the 59th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 2,096 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Carter Lake at the 59th percentile, close to its 59th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 98.5% of Carter Lake's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 1.5% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Carter Lake compares
Within Iowa, Carter Lake ranks higher (83rd percentile) than it does nationally (59th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Carter Lake ranks 12,853 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,204 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 177 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
At the 59th national percentile, Carter Lake rates elevated for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
What would actually reduce this score
With 98.5% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Carter Lake gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Carter Lake's 12,853-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Carter Lake, see the exposure-zones guide.