Cresco, IA
How exposed is Cresco to wildfire?
USFS scores Cresco at the 27th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 2,309 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Cresco at the 27th national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
92.3% of Cresco's 2,309 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 7.6% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
Where Cresco ranks
Cresco's risk sits at a similar level relative to Iowa (41st percentile statewide) as it does nationally (27th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cresco ranks 23,096 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,679 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 601 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Cresco
Cresco's moderate wildfire rating (27th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Cresco's 92.3% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Cresco's 23,096-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Cresco, see the exposure-zones guide.