Colfax, IA
How exposed is Colfax to wildfire?
USFS scores Colfax at the 49th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 1,315 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Colfax at the 50th national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Colfax's buildings actually sit
Only 23.7% of Colfax's 1,315 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 76.4% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
Colfax against the rest of the country
Compare Colfax's two percentiles: 68th within Iowa, only 49th nationally — a gap of 19 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Colfax ranks 16,161 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,991 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 331 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
Colfax's elevated rating (49th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Colfax
Even with 76.4% of Colfax 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Colfax's 16,161-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Colfax, see the exposure-zones guide.