Hillsboro, IA
Hillsboro wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Hillsboro at the 60th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 194 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Hillsboro at the 63rd national percentile — 2 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
USFS puts 61.9% of Hillsboro's 194 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 38.1% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Hillsboro ranks
Compare Hillsboro's two percentiles: 84th within Iowa, only 60th nationally — a gap of 23 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Hillsboro ranks 12,505 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,070 by building count (1 is largest). Within Iowa alone, it ranks 168 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
Hillsboro's 60th-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 61.9% of Hillsboro's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Hillsboro's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Hillsboro's 12,505-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Hillsboro's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.