Chillicothe, IA
Chillicothe, IA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Chillicothe at the 65th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 84 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Chillicothe at the 67th percentile, close to its 65th-percentile risk score.
Chillicothe's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 63.1% of Chillicothe's 84 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 36.9% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Chillicothe against the rest of the country
Within Iowa, Chillicothe ranks higher (89th percentile) than it does nationally (65th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Chillicothe ranks 10,964 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,724 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 115 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
Chillicothe's high rating (65th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Chillicothe's 63.1% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Chillicothe's 10,964-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Chillicothe, see the exposure-zones guide.