Clarion, IA
How exposed is Clarion to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Clarion lands at the 1st percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 1,586 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 Clarion at the 1st percentile, close to its 1st-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 96.2% of Clarion's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 3.8% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Clarion compares
There's little gap between Clarion's 1st national percentile and its 1st percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Clarion ranks 31,146 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,807 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 1,005 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Clarion
At the 1st national percentile, Clarion rates low for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 96.2% of Clarion 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 1,586 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Clarion. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Clarion, see the exposure-zones guide.