Downey, IA
Downey wildfire risk explained
Downey's 95 buildings earn a 29th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Downey at the 27th percentile, close to its 29th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 55.8% of Downey's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 44.2% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Downey against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Downey's 29th national percentile and its 44th percentile inside Iowa, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Downey ranks 22,398 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,259 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 575 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
Downey's moderate wildfire rating (29th 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 55.8% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Downey 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 Downey's 22,398-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Downey, see the exposure-zones guide.