Climbing Hill, IA
Climbing Hill, IA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Climbing Hill's 107 buildings earn a 77th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Climbing Hill at the 74th percentile, close to its 77th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 36.5% of Climbing Hill's 107 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 29.9% Direct and 33.6% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Climbing Hill against the rest of the country
Within Iowa, Climbing Hill ranks higher (99th percentile) than it does nationally (77th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Climbing Hill ranks 7,374 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 28,730 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 16 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Climbing Hill
Climbing Hill's high rating (77th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Climbing Hill (36.5% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
Where Climbing Hill's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Climbing Hill's 7,374-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Climbing Hill's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.