Gowrie, IA
Gowrie, IA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Gowrie's 616 buildings earn a 4th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Gowrie's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 4th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Gowrie's buildings (78.3% of 616) 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.
Gowrie against the rest of the country
Gowrie's risk sits at a similar level relative to Iowa (7th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (4th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Gowrie ranks 30,321 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,616 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 942 of 1,017 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Iowa on its state page.
Gowrie and the insurance market
Gowrie's low wildfire rating (4th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Gowrie's 78.3% 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 Gowrie's 30,321-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Gowrie, see the exposure-zones guide.