Central City, IA
Central City, IA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Central City at the 30th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 779 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Central City's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 30th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 73.4% of Central City's 779 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 22% Direct and 4.6% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Central City against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Central City's 30th national percentile and its 45th percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Central City ranks 22,021 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 13,823 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 560 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Central City
Central City's moderate wildfire rating (30th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Hardening a home in Central City
Because 73.4% of Central City's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Central City's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Central City's 22,021-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Central City's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.