Clarence, IA
How exposed is Clarence to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Clarence lands at the 7th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 680 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Clarence at the 7th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Clarence rates 86.3% Minimal exposure against just 13.7% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 680 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Where Clarence ranks
There's little gap between Clarence's 7th national percentile and its 16th percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Clarence ranks 29,216 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 14,857 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 860 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Clarence and the insurance market
Clarence's low wildfire rating (7th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Even with 86.3% of Clarence 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.
More on how this number was built
Clarence's 7th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Clarence, see the exposure-zones guide.