Cherokee, IA
How exposed is Cherokee to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Cherokee at the 47th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 2,821 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Cherokee at the 47th percentile, close to its 47th-percentile risk score.
Where Cherokee's buildings actually sit
62.2% of Cherokee's 2,821 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 15.1% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
How Cherokee compares
Compare Cherokee's two percentiles: 64th within Iowa, only 47th nationally — a gap of 17 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cherokee ranks 16,697 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,722 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 364 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Cherokee
Cherokee's elevated wildfire rating (47th 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 Cherokee
With 62.2% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Cherokee 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 Cherokee's 16,697-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Cherokee, see the exposure-zones guide.