Dickens, IA
How exposed is Dickens to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Dickens lands at the 40th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 193 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 Dickens at the 38th percentile, close to its 40th-percentile risk score.
Where Dickens's buildings actually sit
Most of Dickens's buildings (55.4% of 193) 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.
How Dickens compares
Compare Dickens's two percentiles: 56th within Iowa, only 40th nationally — a gap of 15 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Dickens ranks 18,777 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,119 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 451 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
Dickens's elevated wildfire rating (40th 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
With 55.4% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Dickens 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
Dickens's 40th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Dickens, see the exposure-zones guide.