Des Moines, WA
Des Moines, WA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Des Moines lands at the 8th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a figure built from its 9,827 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 Des Moines at the 8th percentile, close to its 8th-percentile risk score.
Des Moines's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Des Moines's buildings (97.6% of 9,827) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 9,827 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Des Moines ranks
There's little gap between Des Moines's 8th national percentile and its 7th percentile inside Washington, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Des Moines ranks 29,137 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,652 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 584 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Des Moines's low rating (8th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 97.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Des Moines gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Des Moines's 29,137-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Des Moines, see the exposure-zones guide.